Livingstone Fagan. [Source: Carol Moore (.net)]Livingstone Fagan, one of the 11 Branch Davidians convicted of crimes related to the February 1993 shootout with federal agents near Waco (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993), admits to firing at two of the four Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) agents killed during the battle. He is the first Davidian to admit firing on BATF agents during the raid. Fagan says in a deposition that he fired at the two agents from the roof of the Davidian compound. The deposition is part of a wrongful death lawsuit brought by a number of Davidians against the federal government (see April 1995). In 1994, Fagan was convicted of manslaughter and a weapons charge, and given a 40-year prison sentence. He chose not to appeal his sentence based on what he says are religious reasons. He is serving his time at a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Fagan is a party to the lawsuit because his mother and wife died in the April 1993 assault on the compound (see April 19, 1993). During the trial, Fagan was identified by BATF agent Eric Evers, who was wounded in the February 1993 raid, as one of the Davidians who shot him. Fagan denies shooting at Evers, but says he did shoot at two other BATF agents. In a statement to attorney Marie Hagen, Fagan claimed he shot in self-defense, saying, “Your government murdered people who were very dear to me.” In the following exchange, which is part of Fagan’s deposition, he admits to shooting at the agents: Hagen: “Did you shoot at them?” Fagan: “Well, they fired at me.” Hagen: “OK. But did you shoot at them?” Fagan: “And so I responded.” Hagen: “Did you hit any of them?” Fagan: “I don’t know specifically, because I assume that there were others, too, that were firing then.” Fagan says he watched one wounded BATF agent, Kenneth King, crawl from the rooftop, drop to the ground, and writhe in pain until he was rescued by fellow agents. A fellow Davidian who survived the April 1993 conflagration, David Thibodeau (see September 9, 1999), had written that Fagan “was kneeling in prayer in the chapel while the bullets were flying.” And Clive Doyle, a survivor who was acquitted in the same trial that convicted Fagan, has said he didn’t think Fagan fired during the raid. Fagan’s lawyer Kirk Lyons tries to downplay Fagan’s admission, saying: “This is a guy that’s been in solitary confinement for a long time, and he’s had nobody of his own mental abilities that he can talk to. He’s a little stir-crazy.” [San Antonio Express-News, 2/23/2000]

Memos withheld from Congressional investigators (see August 4, 1995) by the FBI show that the FBI was riven by dissension during the Branch Davidian siege, which culminated in a fiery conflagration that killed scores of sect members (see April 19, 1993). The memos are released by the Dallas Morning News. Many senior FBI officials were pressing to use tear gas to bring the siege to a close, some as early as three weeks after its start. According to a March 23, 1993 memo (see March 23, 1993) written by then-Deputy Assistant Director Danny Coulson, the FBI’s top expert on tactics, the Hostage Rescue Team leader, Richard Rogers, was pressuring FBI officials to terminate the siege by using gas as part of an assault. Coulson disagreed with Rogers’s recommendations. Coulson is the former agent who recently revealed that the FBI had used pyrotechnic grenades during the final assault (see August 25, 1999 and After). Some House members are angry about the withheld memo, and note that they have consistently been denied documents even after subpoenas were issued. “We’ve had a subpoena out there for all relevant documents—all documents—since September 7, 1999,” says Mark Corallo, the spokesman for the House Government Reform Committee. “Is the Department of Justice withholding only embarrassing documents from us? It makes you wonder.” Other FBI documents released by the Dallas Morning News show that Attorney General Janet Reno gave her approval to use tear gas on the compound (see April 17-18, 1993). [Dallas Morning News, 2/28/2000]

Two former FBI negotiators who were heavily involved in the bureau’s siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas (see March 1, 1993), testify that the aggressive and hostile methods used by the FBI during the siege and final assault (see April 19, 1993) destroyed any chances of successfully negotiating a peaceful surrender from the Davidians, and resulted in the needless deaths of many Davidians who might have otherwise left the compound before the final, fatal assault. The agents give depositions for an upcoming civil suit filed by the surviving Davidians against the government (see April 1995). Retired FBI agent Frederick Lanceley testifies: “I think we could’ve gotten more people out if there were better decisions. I don’t think we would have gotten everybody out. But I think we would’ve gotten more people out.” [Dallas Morning News, 3/6/2000]

An image from the ‘60 Minutes’ broadcast of its interview with Timothy McVeigh. [Source: CBS News]CBS News airs a February 22, 2000 interview with convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and June 2, 1997), awaiting execution in an Indiana federal prison (see July 13, 1999). McVeigh was interviewed by CBS reporter Ed Bradley for a 60 Minutes segment. McVeigh set only one condition for the interview: that Bradley not ask him whether he bombed the Murrah Federal Building. CBS does not air the entire interview, but runs selected excerpts interspersed with comments from others, including family members of the bombing victims. McVeigh spoke about his political ideology, his service in the Gulf War (see January - March 1991 and After), and what he considers to be his unfair criminal trial (see August 14-27, 1997). He expressed no remorse over the dead of Oklahoma City, and blamed the US government for teaching, through what he says is its aggressive foreign policy and application of the death penalty, the lesson that “violence is an acceptable option.” McVeigh described himself as returning from the Gulf War angry and bitter, saying: “I went over there hyped up, just like everyone else. What I experienced, though, was an entirely different ballgame. And being face-to-face close with these people in personal contact, you realize they’re just people like you.” Jim Denny, who had two children injured in the bombing, said he did not understand McVeigh’s Gulf War comparison: “We went over there to save a country and save innocent lives. When he compared that to what happened in Oklahoma City, I didn’t see the comparison. He came across as ‘the government uses force, so it’s OK for its citizens to use force.’ We don’t believe in using force.” McVeigh told Bradley that he “thought it was terrible that there were children in the building,” which provoked an angry reaction from Jannie Coverdale, who lost two grandchildren in the blast. “Timothy McVeigh is full of it,” she said. “He said it was terrible about the children. He had been to the Day Care Center. He had talked to the director of the Day Care Center. He knew those children were there.” McVeigh explained that the use of violence against the government could be justified by the fact that the government itself uses violence to carry out its aims. “If government is the teacher, violence would be an acceptable option,” he said. “What did we do to Sudan? What did we do to Afghanistan? Belgrade? What are we doing with the death penalty? It appears they use violence as an option all the time.” He said that the ubiquitous pictures of himself in an orange jumpsuit, leg irons, and handcuffs that made the rounds of the media two days after his arrest (see April 21, 1995) were “the beginning of a propaganda campaign.” Jurors, however, denied that pretrial publicity influenced their judgment. Juror John Candelaria told Bradley, “He’s the Oklahoma City bomber, and there is no doubt about it in my mind.” McVeigh refused to express any regrets or a wish that his life could have gone in a different direction, telling Bradley: “I think anybody in life says, ‘I wish I could have gone back and done this differently, done that differently.’ There are moments, but not one that stands out.” He admitted to forging something of a friendship with one of his former cellblock colleagues in the Colorado supermax prison he formerly occupied, Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, the Unabomber. McVeigh said that while Kaczynski is “far left” while he is “far right” politically, “I found that, in a way that I didn’t realize, that we were much alike in that all we ever wanted or all we wanted out of life was the freedom to live our own lives however we chose to.” [Douglas O. Linder, 2001; CBS News, 5/11/2001; Douglas O. Linder, 2006; CBS News, 4/20/2009]

Six postal inspectors and two Army soldiers, all dressed in a variety of FBI-standard assault garb, reenact key scenarios from the 1993 FBI assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993). The purpose is to recreate “flashes” observed in 1993 infrared videotapes made by FBI observers during the assault, and determine if they were indeed gunfire from FBI agents, as some have alleged (see November 15, 1999). The exercise is done at the behest of District Judge Walter Smith, who ordered it as part of the proceedings of a civil suit by surviving Davidians against the federal government (see April 1995); additionally, the scenario is part of the evidentiary gathering by federal special counsel John Danforth, investigating the role of the FBI in the burning of the Davidian compound (see September 7-8, 1999). FBI officials who view the infrared tapes say they bear out their long-held assertions that none of their agents fired their guns during the April 19 assault on the Davidian compound. Michael Caddell, the lead lawyer for the Davidians in the lawsuit, says he believes the simulations will prove that the FBI shot at the compound, which is what his own experts reviewing the videos have said. US Attorney Michael Bradford, one of the government’s lead lawyers in the case, disagrees. “What we’re trying to do here… is get this issue hopefully put to rest so that the American public will not continue to hear what we consider a baseless allegation without foundation that the FBI was out in the back of that compound shooting that day,” he says. “It didn’t happen.” [New York Times, 3/20/2000; Washington Post, 3/20/2000]Public Precluded from Seeing Videotapes - The exercise takes place at Fort Hood, Texas, under Danforth’s supervision. Initially, the infrared videos of the exercises were to be released to the public, but Smith seals the videos from public view. And, siding with Danforth against the Davidian lawyers, Smith denies motions by several news media organizations to witness the test. The New York Times writes, “The lack of public access has created the possibility that both sides in the case would offer conflicting opinions without any public review of the videos.” An independent analysis of the videos conducted by the private British company that conducts the simulations may be released to the public after they are turned over to the court some time in April. [New York Times, 2/17/2000; New York Times, 3/20/2000]Simulations Carried Out to Determine Whether Videotaped 'Flashes' Might Be Gunfire - Danforth, Smith, and a group of about 20 observers watch the simulations, including representatives from the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Texas Rangers, and private lawyers representing the plaintiffs. In the simulations, the eight participants fire different weapons from prone and kneeling positions. They then slowly advance to a prescribed firing line, where they fire a series of single shots followed by short bursts and then long bursts of automatic gunfire. They repeat the exercise four times, as an FBI “Nightstalker” surveillance aircraft and a British Navy helicopter take turns filming from different angles. Additionally, an armored vehicle is driven beside a field littered with debris like twisted aluminum, broken glass, and pools of water, to see if light flashes from the debris could have caused similar flashes on the infrared video that could be mistaken for gunfire. Bradford has said that no matter how the videos are interpreted, they cannot be taken as proof that agents fired guns during the assault. “If there’s a flash in the testing, you can’t just conclude that means there was gunfire on April 19th,” Bradford said. “To me, that would mean the opposite. It would indicate it’s not a gun flash because you can’t see a person there. There’s more to be analyzed than just the flashes.” The private British firm, Vector Data Systems, was chosen in part because it owns FLIR, or “forward-looking infrared,” video cameras similar to those used by the FBI in 1993; the bureau has since abandoned those video cameras for more current technology. [New York Times, 2/17/2000; New York Times, 3/20/2000]Davidian Lawyer: No Broad Conspiracy by FBI, Justice Department to Conceal Truth - Caddell disagrees with some Davidian supporters in discounting the broader conspiracy theories they advocate. “I know that may disappoint some people,” he says. “But this is not a big conspiracy, it’s a small conspiracy. There were a handful of people on April 19 who took matters into their own hands and disobeyed the orders of the attorney general and the FBI leadership. Those people have to be held accountable.” Of the Danforth investigators, Caddell says: “I think they’ll issue an honest report, a fair report. And I think it will be critical in many respects.” [Waco Tribune-Herald, 2/18/2000; Washington Post, 3/20/2000]

William Pierce, the founder of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the inflammatory and highly influential white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978), asks on the Alliance’s weekly radio broadcast American Dissident Voices (ADV), “Why should I not be able to do what is right and natural and kill those who commit such an abomination?” Pierce is referring to white women who date African-American men (see 1988 and November 26, 2004). In the same broadcast, he says: “We should be going from door to door with a list of names and slaying those who have engineered this assault on our people.… And we know who the engineers are.… They are, first and foremost, the media bosses and the other leaders of the Jews.” [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ]

In an interview, President Clinton says he “gave in” to the Justice Department’s arguments to go forward with the April 1993 FBI assault on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. The resulting fiery conflagration took the lives of almost 80 Davidians and touched off a never-ending storm of controversy, accusations, and alternative theories (see April 19, 1993). The transcript of the interview will not be released until July 2000. When the transcript is released, Attorney General Janet Reno will say both she and Clinton required assurances about the operation’s necessity. “I think we both had to be convinced, if you will,” Reno will say. Reno signed off on the final orders for the assault (see April 17-18, 1993). Clinton says: “I gave in to the people in the Justice Department who were pleading to go in early, and I felt personally responsible for what had happened, and I still do. I made a terrible mistake.” Reno will say that she and Clinton discussed the imminent assault and the answers she had received from senior FBI officials. “My recollection was that we had a very difficult situation, that there were many issues,” she will say. “I went over those issues with him. He wanted to make sure my questions had been answered.” [Dallas Morning News, 7/28/2000] In November 2000, Reno will tell a group of schoolchildren in New York City, “[I]n a way, I’ll never know what the right thing to do was” in ending the standoff, but people have to “live with [their] judgments.… I’ve tried to do what is right.” Reno will make her statement in response to a direct question by a young girl. [New York Post, 11/21/2000]

USA Today reports that “Israeli crime groups… dominate distribution” of the drug Ecstasy. [USA Today, 4/19/2000] The DEA also states that most of the Ecstasy sold in the US is “controlled by organized crime figures in Western Europe, Russia, and Israel.” [United Press International, 10/25/2001] According to DEA documents, the Israeli “art student spy ring”
“has been linked to several ongoing DEA [Ecstasy] investigations in Florida, California, Texas, and New York now being closely coordinated by DEA headquarters.” [Insight, 3/11/2002]

Workers put the finishing touches on the Oklahoma City National Memorial. The time of the bombing, ‘9:01,’ is inscribed on the side of the memorial. [Source: Associated Press]On the fifth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), dedication ceremonies are held at the Oklahoma City National Memorial, built on the site of the bombed-out Murrah Federal Building. The memorial is on three acres of land, and contains a reflecting pool and 168 chairs—149 larger chairs representing the adults killed in the blast and 19 for the children who died in the bombing. [Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Indianapolis Star, 2003]

Judge Walter Smith, presiding over the $675 million civil suit brought by survivors and family members of the Davidian siege near Waco, Texas (see April 1995), announces that a court expert has determined that neither the FBI nor the Davidians fired weapons during the final day of the siege (see April 19, 1993). The expert’s preliminary study of infrared videotapes finds no firearm muzzle flashes from either federal agents or sect members (see March 20, 2000). [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 7/21/2000]

One of the signs posted in John Joe Gray’s Texas compound. [Source: True Crime Report]Texas Constitutional Militia member John Joe Gray barricades himself inside his rural home in Trinidad, Texas, with heavily armed family members, attempting to face down police officers. Gray is charged with assaulting two highway patrolmen; in 1999, he was pulled over for speeding, and as a result tried to grab a trooper’s gun and bit another trooper in the hand. Troopers subsequently found a number of high-powered rifles and plans to blow up a Dallas bridge in his car. When a judge lets Gray out of jail, he retreats to his 47-acre compound, accompanied by family members and friends from local militias. He sends a letter to local police telling them if they want to come and get him, they’d “better bring plenty of body bags.” Actor and conservative activist Chuck Norris, a Gray hero, fails to broker a settlement. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001; True Crime Report, 6/29/2010] Gray and his family members remain barricaded in the home for 10 years, with law enforcement officials choosing to allow him to remain in the home rather than flush him out and risk violence. (Some of those in the compound with Gray will later choose to depart.) Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe will say of Gray: “There were things that he had on him that led me to believe that he posed a threat to the safety of people in another city. That he was capable of building a bomb, that he had plans to make a bomb to blow up a bridge in Dallas, and that concerned me.” Local officials have bad memories of the Branch Davidian standoff in nearby Waco (see April 19, 1993), and say they are determined not to make the same mistake that federal and local officials made at that time. Henderson County Sheriff Ray Nutt will say, “I’m not willing to risk my deputies’ lives, and I really don’t want to end up having to kill a bunch of them folks up there.” Among the family members barricaded with Gray are Samuel and Joe Tarkington, two children who were brought to the Gray home by their mother—Gray’s daughter—and who have remained there ever since; and Gray’s two sons Jonathan and Timothy. The compound has its own food and water sources, but lacks electricity. “They’re still out there. [Gray’s] still in his own prison,” Nutt will say. “They’ve done no damage to anyone in the 10 years they’ve been out there. They haven’t won—we just haven’t been able to arrest them yet.” Gray has repeatedly vowed to kill anyone who attempts to enter the compound. [ABC News, 2/12/2010; True Crime Report, 6/29/2010] In June 2010, he will tell a reporter: “I’ll never leave. I don’t feel like a prisoner… because I’m living out here and following God’s laws.” [Associated Press, 6/28/2010]

The court in the $675 million civil suit brought by Branch Davidians against the federal government (see April 1995) releases the final report on a simulation of some aspects of the final siege, which killed almost 80 Davidians (see April 19, 1993). Experts find that flashes seen on a videotape, once thought to be muzzle flashes from the weapons of FBI agents (see October 1999), were sunlight reflecting off debris and not gunfire (see March 20, 2000). The final report supports earlier findings (see April 24, 2000). [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 7/21/2000]

Jeff “Free” Luers. [Source: Free Jeff Luers (.org)]Two Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997) activists, Jeff “Free” Luers and Craig “Critter” Marshall, firebomb a car dealership in Eugene, Oregon, destroying 36 sport utility vehicles (SUVs). Luers will be convicted and sentenced to over 22 years in prison; Marshall will receive over five years. Luers and Marshall will become two of the most well-known jailed “ecoterrorists” (see 1970s), and will be the subject of intensive public efforts to gain their release. “Failure to support our prisoners is tantamount to sanctioning repression by the state,” an ELF statement will proclaim. ELF and other environmental, anarchist, and animal rights organizations will solicit funds for their legal representation, create Web sites to garner publicity, and organize concerts on their behalf. Both ELF and a Eugene organization called Green Anarchy label Luers and Marshal “prisoners of war.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005; Eugene Register-Guard, 12/18/2009]

The Supreme Court unanimously overturns the lengthy prison sentences given to five Branch Davidians for using machine guns during a February 1993 shootout with federal agents (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993 and January-February 1994). Writing for the Court, Justice Stephen Breyer says a Texas federal judge should not have used a federal firearm law to increase the convicted Davidians’ sentences, but instead let the jury make that decision. The ruling sends the case back to the judge for a new sentencing. [Reuters, 6/5/2000] A judge will reduce the 40-year sentences to 15 years. [Associated Press, 4/19/2006]

Testimony begins in the civil suit filed by the survivors of the Branch Davidian conflagration outside Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993), and the family members of those killed in the fire. The plaintiffs claim the government is responsible for the wrongful death of some 80 Davidians (see April 1995). The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Michael Caddell, shows pictures of 15 children who died in the fire, and tells the jury that each of the children “never owned a gun. Never broke the law. Never hurt anyone.” For his part, US Attorney Michael Bradford, heading the government defense team, calls the Mt. Carmel compound of the Davidians an “armed encampment,” and says the Davidians ambushed agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF, sometimes abbreviated ATF) when those agents presented search and arrest warrants to the residents (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993 and March 1, 1993). Bradford tells the jury that Davidian leader David Koresh is responsible for the fire, not the FBI agents who assaulted the compound with tear gas and assault vehicles (see Late September - October 1993, August 2, 1996, and July 21, 2000). “The responsibility for those tragic events should not be placed upon the shoulders of the brave men and women of the ATF and the FBI,” Bradford says. “The responsibility for what happened at Mount Carmel is on David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. They caused this dangerous situation to occur, and they brought it to a tragic end.” The first to testify are three survivors of the conflagration, marking the first time any survivors have testified in the five-year legal proceedings. The survivors say that government reports of the Davidians being “armed to the teeth” are wrong, and depict the community as a happy, peaceful group. “There were people from all over the world: different personalities, different families, different interests, different likes and dislikes. We were all there for one purpose, and that was the Bible studies,” says Rita Riddle, who lost her brother Jimmy Riddle in the final fire. “David [Koresh] was my teacher.” Jaunessa Wendel, one of the children who left the compound before the fire, says: “It was our home. It was like an apartment building, a community center.” She testifies about bullets smashing through a window during the initial BATF raid, coming perilously close to striking her three younger siblings. “There was glass in my brother’s crib,” she recalls. Wendel’s mother, Jaydean Wendel, died in the shootout. Her father, Mark Wendel, died in the final fire. The three say they never learned to use guns from Koresh and other Davidians, disputing government testimony to the contrary, but admit that Koresh took other men’s wives as his own and fathered many of the community’s children (see February 27 - March 3, 1993). The government lawyers note that Wendel and another adult survivor previously told authorities that, contrary to their testimony today, they saw Riddle carrying or shooting a gun during the BATF raid, a contention that Riddle denies. Wendel says she lied during that testimony for fear that her family “might be split up” by the authorities if she did not tell them what she believed they wanted to hear. Government lawyers repeat earlier testimony from Wendel saying that she saw her mother fire on BATF agents. “You just made all that up?” Bradford asks. [Dallas Morning News, 6/6/2000]

Judge Walter Smith, presiding over the $675 million civil suit brought by survivors and family members of the Branch Davidian siege near Waco, Texas (see April 1995 and June 6, 2000), rules that the question of whether FBI agents fired on Davidians during the final siege (see May 10, 2000) will not be considered by the advisory jury that will determine whether the government is culpable for the “wrongful deaths” of some 80 Davidians. Instead, Smith says he will revisit the issue when a court-appointed expert becomes available to provide testimony. [Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 7/21/2000]

Media investigations show that the February 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, that resulted in the deaths of four BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) agents and six Davidians (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993) lost the element of surprise when a local sheriff’s department official tipped off the Davidians. The BATF has blamed television cameraman Jim Peeler of Waco’s KWTX-TV for alerting a local mailman, David Jones, to the upcoming raid. Jones, a relative of Davidian leader David Koresh, alerted Koresh to the imminent raid. However, Peeler was told of the raid by Cal Luedke, a longtime member of the McLennan County Sheriff’s Office. Luedke was part of the BATF’s raid preparation and support team. Luedke denies the allegation, but a KWTX cameraman who filmed part of the raid, Dan Mulloney, says station officials learned of Luedke’s role from local reporter Tommy Witherspoon, who learned of the incident from Luedke himself. “Tommy told me it was Cal. No doubt about it,” Mulloney says. “I knew if Tommy said something was true, it was. I could trust him 100 percent. And he told me that Cal had told him the raid had been moved up to Sunday.” Witherspoon denies telling Mulloney the identity of his source, and says Mulloney learned of Luedke’s involvement from another source, whom Mulloney identifies as his girlfriend, who worked for the Waco ambulance company that was on alert the morning of the raid. State and federal authorities, including the BATF and the Texas Rangers, have confirmed Luedke’s involvement in alerting the Davidians, and say that Luedke has admitted to tipping off the Davidians to the raid. However, when asked by reporters in March about the story, he denied any involvement. He has also denied his involvement in a deposition given on behalf of a lawsuit filed by a group of current and former BATF agents against KWTX, a local newspaper, and the ambulance company, which charged that the three were responsible for tipping off the Davidians. The case was settled out of court. Peeler and Mulloney say their reputations have been irreparably damaged by years of accusations that they were partly responsible for the 10 deaths at the Davidian compound. [Austin Chronicle, 6/23/2000]

An advisory jury of five panelists in Waco, Texas, rules that law enforcement agents did not start the gun battle that began the Waco standoff between law enforcement officials and the Branch Davidians (see April 19, 1993), and decides that the federal government owes nothing to the Davidians who survived the conflagration. The panel takes just over an hour to decide that the government has no liability in the BATF raid (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993), standoff, FBI assault, and culminating fire. The presiding judge, Walter Smith, will issue a final verdict next month after an expert testifies as to the possibility that the FBI fired into the compound during the siege, actions the FBI and Justice Department have long denied (see June 12, 2000). The civil suit had asked for $675 million in damages for the government’s allegedly causing the “wrongful deaths” of the Davidians. Waco music shop owner Bill Buzze says he and his fellow residents are ready for the publicity and the notoriety surrounding the Davidians to come to an end. “We really want it all to just go away,” he says. “It’s gone on too long, cost too much money, and hurt too many people.” Buzze’s employee Inez Bederka is not sure that people will forget so quickly. “I think it will always be on Waco, the stigma,” she says. “People are still putting Waco down real hard these days. The outside world just won’t treat you fair after a thing like that.… [I]t’s a shame that something bad like that had to happen before people heard about Waco.” Buzze says that many people have an unwarranted fascination and even fear of Waco and the surrounding area. “The Chamber of Commerce has a tough job now,” Buzze says. “They have to reassure people that we’re not going to shoot them if they come down to visit.” Chamber of Commerce president Jack Stewart is quick to point out that the Branch Davidians did not live in Waco proper, but in Elk, a small township on the outskirts of Waco. [Waco Journal, 7/18/2000; Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001]

An investigative commission headed by former Senator John C. Danforth (R-MO) finds no wrongdoing on the parts of the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF), or the Justice Department in their actions during the Waco standoff between law enforcement officials and the Branch Davidians (see 5:00 A.M. - 9:30 A.M. February 28, 1993 and April 19, 1993). Attorney General Janet Reno appointed the commission after documents surfaced in 1999 that indicated an FBI agent fired pyrotechnic gas canisters near the Branch Davidian compound during the raid, possibily contributing to the fire that destroyed the compound and killed many sect members (see August 25, 1999 and After). Danforth’s investigation also finds that, despite the documents, no government agency or individual contributed to any alleged cover-up, and emphatically clears Reno of any responsibility for the calamity. Danforth does find that a single FBI agent fired three flammable gas canisters into a concrete pit some 75 feet from the compound itself, as previously acknowledged. His report concludes that the FBI most likely mishandled that information, though the possibility exists of some sort of deliberate cover-up or falsification of evidence. Danforth’s report also notes that he had encountered “substantial resistance” to his probe from Justice Department officials, in some cases resulting in a “tug of war” over requested evidence that required intervention by Reno’s top deputy. [PBS Frontline, 10/1995; Dallas Morning News, 7/28/2000] Asked whether she feels vindicated by the report, Reno says: “One doesn’t think in terms of exoneration when you look at something like that. That was a terrible tragedy. And what I have always said was we have got to look to the future to see what we can do, what we can learn about human behavior to avoid tragedies like that.” The final report sums up 10 months of investigation, interviews, and evidence assessment; the investigation cost $12 million. [Dallas Morning News, 7/28/2000]

Eric Rudolph, the anti-abortion activist and domestic terrorist wanted for four separate bombings (see July 27, 1996 and After, January 16, 1997, February 21, 1997, and January 29, 1998) currently hiding out in the mountainous wilds of western North Carolina, crafts a fifth bomb from a stash of dynamite. He surveills the National Guard Armory in Murphy, North Carolina, where the FBI task force seeking him is centered (see August 13-21, 1998). He places two booby traps on the path leading to the armory, and places the bomb itself against the building. However, Rudolph decides not to detonate any of the devices. Later, he will write: “The agents didn’t die that day. Perhaps after watching them for so many months, their individual humanity shown through the hated uniform. It was not that I had lost my resolve to fight in the defense of the unborn, but rather an individual decision about these individual agents. I had worn the uniform of their legions, served in their ranks [Rudolph briefly served in the military]. I had no hatred for them as individuals. Even though they served a morally bankrupt government, underneath their FBI rags they were essentially fellow countrymen.” Rudolph detonates the booby traps, and retrieves the bomb and buries it. The FBI soon finds the bomb—a 25-pound device filled with screws to act as shrapnel—buried across the street from the armory. [Orlando Weekly, 8/24/2006]

Massachusetts voters pass a ballot question restricting the right of jailed convicts to vote. Unlike many states (see 1802-1857), Massachusetts has not restricted the right of convicted criminals to vote. Pursuant to the ballot question, Massachusetts changes its Constitution to read, “Persons who are incarcerated in a correctional facility due to a felony conviction may not vote.” [ProCon, 10/19/2010]

Former federal prosecutor William “Bill” Johnston is indicted for obstructing the investigation of special counsel John Danforth, who led a government probe into the Branch Davidian debacle near Waco, Texas (see April 19, 1993, September 7-8, 1999, and July 21, 2000). Johnston, a former US attorney in Waco, is accused of concealing information about the FBI’s use of pyrotechnic CS gas rounds during the final assault on the Davidian compound (see August 25, 1999 and After). Danforth, a former Republican senator, says he preferred to release the investigation report without prosecuting anyone, but says the charges against Johnston are too severe to ignore. “I couldn’t just shrug it off,” Danforth says. Johnston is accused of hiding his notes about the use of incendiary tear gas rounds from the Justice Department and Congress. He is also accused of later lying about the notes to Danforth’s investigators and to the grand jury. Johnston has admitted to hiding his notes, but also helped bring the information about the incendiary gas rounds to the public. “My actions were foolish, regrettable, and wrong, but they were not criminal,” Johnston says. “I can’t confess to concealing the pyrotechnics when I was the government employee most responsible for disclosing them. And I can’t take full blame when there is so much blame to be spread around.” Danforth’s report found no evidence of a widespread government conspiracy to cover up the use of the pyrotechnic gas rounds, but asserted that members of the Justice Department’s prosecution team had failed to give information about the rounds to Davidian defense lawyers during a criminal trial in 1994 (see January-February 1994). The report also criticized two FBI evidence technicians, Richard Crum and James Cadigan, who checked the crime scene for failing to keep notes and giving evasive statements on their findings. Johnston says he hid his notes to protect himself from “enemies” in the Justice Department. “Certain people leaked a memo to the news media making it appear—falsely—that I attended a 1993 meeting at which the term ‘pyrotechnic’ was used,” Johnston says. “In any event, when I uncovered the notes, only days after the memo was leaked, I panicked, because I had just been ordered to place all my trial material in the hands of the people behind the smear campaign. I should have turned those notes over anyway and suffered the consequences, but I didn’t.” Danforth says that two other prosecutors on the trial, Ray Jahns and LeRoy Jahns, knew about the pyrotechnic gas rounds but did not disclose their knowledge. However, Danforth says there is not enough “tangible” evidence against the two to file charges. “There is a difference between what I believe and conclude and what I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” he says. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 11/9/2000] Johnston will accept a plea-bargain deal that gives him two years’ probation and 200 hours of community service in return for an admission of guilt. He will tell the court: “Whatever my reason [for withholding his notes], it was wrong. It will never be right to withhold something in fear or panic or whatever reason.” [Associated Press, 6/7/2001] In August 1999, Johnston wrote to Attorney General Janet Reno that he believes unnamed Justice Department officials were concealing evidence from her (see August 30, 1999).

Florida Democrats sue the Seminole County Canvassing Board in state court for including absentee ballots in the vote totals that they say did not satisfy the provisions of 101.62 of the Florida Election Code (see November 15-17, 2000). These provisions require that a citizen requesting an absentee ballot provide the elector’s registration number on their application. [Leip, 2008] The Seminole County elections supervisor allowed Republican Party workers to correct thousands of Republican ballots to allow them to be counted (see November 12, 2000).

A photograph of the Republican operatives mobbing the Miami-Dade elections offices. Those identified in the photograph include Thomas Pyle, Garry Malphrus, Rory Cooper, Kevin Smith, Steven Brady, Matt Schlapp, Roger Morse, Duane Gibson, Chuck Royal, and Layna McConkey. [Source: Pensito Review]Miami-Dade County election officials vote unanimously to halt the county’s manual recount of presidential ballots (see November 7, 2000 and Before 10:00 a.m. November 19, 2000), saying the county does not have enough time to complete its recount by the November 26 deadline. Instead, they vote to recount only 10,750 “undervotes,” ballots that don’t clearly indicate a presidential choice. The decision costs Democratic candidate Al Gore a 157-vote gain from the halted recount process. That evening, a Florida State appeals court denies a motion by Democrats to force Miami-Dade County to restart the manual recount. [US News and World Report, 12/13/2000; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12/17/2000; Leip, 2008]Opposing Beliefs - The next day, the Florida Supreme Court will also refuse to order Miami-Dade to restart the recount (see 2:45 p.m. November 23, 2000). Press reports say that the decision “dramatically reverse[s] the chances of Al Gore gathering enough votes to defeat George W. Bush.” Gore’s senior campaign advisor William Daley calls the recounts “mandatory” and calls for “the rule of law” to be upheld. For his part, Bush says: “I believe Secretary Cheney and I won the vote in Florida (see After 3:30 a.m. November 8, 2000). And I believe some are determined to keep counting in an effort to change the legitimate result.” In light of the Miami-Dade decision, the Bush campaign’s chief legal advisor James Baker invites the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature to unilaterally declare Bush the victor, saying, “One should not now be surprised if the Florida legislature seeks to affirm the original rules.” Agitators Disrupt Recount Proceedings - The recount proceedings are disrupted and ultimately ended by a mob of Republicans, some local and some bussed and flown in from Washington by the Bush campaign. The agitators are protesting outside the Miami-Dade County election offices, shouting and attempting to interfere with the proceedings of the canvassing board. Republicans have accused a Democratic lawyer of stealing a ballot. [Guardian, 11/23/2000; Guardian, 11/25/2000]Rioters Made Up of Republican Staffers, Others - Democrats accuse Republican protesters of intimidating the Miami-Dade County officials into stopping the recount. Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman says the demonstrations in Miami have been orchestrated by Republicans “to intimidate and to prevent a simple count of votes from going forward.” Six Democratic members of the US Congress demand the Justice Department investigate the claims, saying that civil rights have been violated in “a shocking case of undermining the right to vote through intimidation and threats of violence.” Jenny Backus, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), says, “The Republicans are out of control,” and accuses them of using paid agitators to “create mob rule in Miami.” [Guardian, 11/25/2000] Later investigations show that the “spontaneous protests” by Republican protesters were far more orchestrated and violent than generally reported by the press at the time. Investigative journalist Robert Parry will write that the protests, called the “Brooks Brothers Riot” because of the wealthy, “preppie” makeup of the “protesters,” helped stop the recount, “and showed how far Bush’s supporters were ready to go to put their man in the White House.” He will write that the protests should be more accurately termed a riot. At least six of the rioters were paid by the Bush recount committee, payments documented in Bush committee records only released to the IRS in July 2002 (see July 15, 2002). Twelve Republican staffers will later be identified in photographs of the rioters. The six who can be confirmed as being paid are: Bush staffer Matt Schlapp from Austin, Texas; Thomas Pyle, a staff aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-TX); DeLay fundraiser Michael Murphy; Garry Malphrus, House majority chief counsel to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Criminal Justice; Charles Royal, a legislative aide to Representative Jim DeMint (R-SC); and former Republican House staffer Kevin Smith. Another Republican is identified as Doug Heye, a staffer for Representative Richard Pombo (R-CA). At least three of the rioters—Schlapp, Malphrus, and Joel Kaplan—will later join the Bush White House. Many of the rioters were brought in on planes and buses from Washington as early as mid-November, with promises of expenses payments. On November 18, 2000, the Bush campaign told activists, “We now need to send reinforcements” to rush to Florida. “The campaign will pay airfare and hotel expenses for people willing to go.” Many of the respondents are low-level Republican staffers from Congress. “These reinforcements… added an angrier tone to the dueling street protests already underway between supporters of Bush and Gore,” Parry will write. Quoting ABC reporter Jake Tapper, Parry will write, “The new wave of Republican activists injected ‘venom and volatility into an already edgy situation.’” Signifying the tone, before the Miami riot, Brad Blakeman, Bush’s campaign director of advance travel logistics, screamed down a CNN correspondent attempting to interview a Democratic Congressman: “This is the new Republican Party, sir! We’re not going to take it anymore!” [Consortium News, 11/27/2000; Consortium News, 8/5/2002; Vanity Fair, 10/2004] Some of the local protesters are summoned to the Miami-Dade electoral offices by angry broadcasts over radio stations with largely Cuban-American audiences; over these radio stations, listeners hear Bush campaign lawyer Roger Stone, coordinating the radio response, say that the recounts intend to disenfranchise Hispanic voters. Republican operatives coordinate the protests by shouting orders through megaphones. [Consortium News, 11/24/2000; Center for American Progress, 12/9/2010] Cuban-Americans voted heavily for Bush in the November 7 election. [Tapper, 3/2001]Details of the Riot; Staffers Assaulted and Beaten - After learning that the Miami-Dade County canvassing board was beginning to examine 10,750 disputed ballots that had not previously been counted, US Representative John Sweeney (R-NY) issues the order to “Shut it down!” (Sweeney is coordinating his efforts with a local Cuban congressman who himself is coordinating the Cuban-American mob response.) Brendan Quinn, the executive director of the New York Republican Party, tells some two dozen Republican operatives outside the Miami-Dade County election offices to storm the room on the 19th floor where the canvassing board is meeting. Tapper later writes: “Emotional and angry, they immediately make their way outside the larger room in which the tabulating room is contained. The mass of ‘angry voters’ on the 19th floor swells to maybe 80 people,” including many of the Republican activists from outside Florida, and joined by local protesters. As news organizations videotape the scene, the protesters reach the board offices and begin shouting slogans such as “Stop the count! Stop the fraud!” “Three Blind Mice!” and “Fraud, fraud, fraud!” and banging on doors and walls. The protesters also shout that a thousand potentially violent Cuban-Americans are on the way. Official observers and reporters are unable to force their way through the shouting crowd of Republican operatives and their cohorts. Miami-Dade spokesman Mayco Villafena is physically assaulted, being pushed and shoved by an unknown number of assailants. Security officials, badly outmanned, fear the confrontation will swell into a full-scale riot. Miami-Dade elections supervisor David Leahy orders the recounts stopped, saying, “Until the demonstration stops, nobody can do anything.” (Although board members will later insist that they were not intimidated into stopping, the recounts will never begin again. Leahy will later say: “This was perceived as not being an open and fair process. That weighed heavy on our minds.”) Meanwhile, unaware of the rioting, county Democratic chairman Joe Geller stops at another office in search of a sample ballot. He wants to prove his theory that some voters had intended to vote for Gore, but instead marked an adjoining number indicating no choice. He finds one and leaves the office. Some of the rioters spot Geller with the sample ballot, and one shouts, “This guy’s got a ballot!” Tapper will later write: “The masses swarm around him, yelling, getting in his face, pushing him, grabbing him. ‘Arrest him!’ they cry. ‘Arrest him!’ With the help of a diminutive DNC [Democratic National Committee] aide, Luis Rosero, and the political director of the Miami Gore campaign, Joe Fraga, Geller manages to wrench himself into the elevator.” Rosero stays behind to attempt to talk with a reporter, and instead is kicked and punched by rioters. A woman shoves Rosero into a much larger man in what Tapper will later theorize was an attempt to start a fight between Rosero and the other person. In the building lobby, some 50 Republican protesters and activists swarm Geller, surrounding him. Police escort Geller back to the 19th floor in both an attempt to save him from harm and to ascertain what is happening. The crowd attempts to pull Geller away from the police. Some of the protesters even accost 73-year-old Representative Carrie Meek (D-FL). Democratic operatives decide to leave the area completely. When the mob learns that the recounts have been terminated, they break forth in lusty cheers. After-Party - After the riots, the Bush campaign pays $35,501.52 for a celebration at Fort Lauderdale’s Hyatt Regency, where the rioters and campaign officials party, enjoy free food and drink, receive congratulatory calls from Bush and Dick Cheney, and are serenaded by Las Vegas crooner Wayne Newton, singing “Danke Schoen,” German for “thank you very much.” Other expenses at the party include lighting, sound system, and even costumes. Media Reportage - Bush and his campaign officials say little publicly about the riot. Some press outlets report the details behind the riots. The Washington Post later reports that “even as the Bush campaign and the Republicans portray themselves as above the fray,” national Republicans actually had joined in and helped finance the riot. The Wall Street Journal tells readers that Bush offered personal words of encouragement to the rioters after the melee, writing, “The night’s highlight was a conference call from Mr. Bush and running mate Dick Cheney, which included joking reference by both running mates to the incident in Miami, two [Republican] staffers in attendance say.” The Journal also observes that the riot was led by national Republican operatives “on all expense-paid trips, courtesy of the Bush campaign.” And, the Journal will note, the rioters went on to attempt to disrupt the recounts in Broward County, but failed there to stop the proceedings. The Journal will write that “behind the rowdy rallies in South Florida this past weekend was a well-organized effort by Republican operatives to entice supporters to South Florida,” with DeLay’s Capitol Hill office taking charge of the recruitment. No similar effort was made by the Gore campaign, the Journal will note: “This has allowed the Republicans to quickly gain the upper hand, protest-wise.” And the Journal will write that the Bush campaign worked to keep its distance from the riots: “Staffers who joined the effort say there has been an air of mystery to the operation. ‘To tell you the truth, nobody knows who is calling the shots,’ says one aide. Many nights, often very late, a memo is slipped underneath the hotel-room doors outlining coming events.” But soon, media reports begin echoing Bush campaign talking points, which call the “protests” “fitting, proper,” and the fault of the canvassing board: “The board made a series of bad decisions and the reaction to it was inevitable and well justified.” The Bush campaign says the mob attack on the elections office was justified because civil rights leader Jesse Jackson had led peaceful, non-violent protests in favor of the recounts in Miami the day before. The campaign also insists that the protests were spontaneous and made up entirely of local citizens. On November 26, Governor Marc Racicot (R-MT), a Bush campaign spokesman, will tell NBC viewers: “Clearly there are Americans on both sides of these issues reflecting very strong viewpoints. But to suggest that somehow this was a threatening situation, in my view, is hyperbolic rhetoric.” Effect of the Riot - According to Parry, the riot, broadcast live on CNN and other networks, “marked a turning point in the recount battle. At the time, Bush clung to a lead that had dwindled to several hundred votes and Gore was pressing for recounts (see November 20-21, 2000). The riot in Miami and the prospects of spreading violence were among the arguments later cited by defenders of the 5-to-4 US Supreme Court ruling (see 9:54 p.m. December 12, 2000)… that stopped a statewide Florida recount and handed Bush the presidency. Backed by the $13.8 million war chest, the Bush operation made clear in Miami and in other protests that it was ready to kick up plenty of political dust if it didn’t get its way.” In the hours after the riot, conservative pundits led by Rush Limbaugh will engage in orchestrated assaults on the recount process as fraudulent and an attempt by the Gore campaign to “invent” votes. No one is ever charged with any criminal behaviors as a result of the riot. [Consortium News, 11/24/2000; Washington Post, 11/27/2000; Village Voice, 12/19/2000; Consortium News, 8/5/2002; Vanity Fair, 10/2004; Center for American Progress, 12/9/2010]

A set of documents is forged implicating Iraq in an attempt to purchase 500 tons of uranium oxide, also known as “yellowcake,” from Niger. [Agence France-Presse, 7/19/2003; Reuters, 7/19/2003; New Yorker, 10/27/2003; Talking Points Memo, 10/31/2003; La Repubblica (Rome), 10/24/2005] It is possible that official stamps and letterhead stolen from the Niger embassy in Rome (see January 2, 2001) are used to fabricate the documents, though a subsequent police investigation suggests that the break-in may have been staged to provide a cover story for the origins of the documents. [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 88] Material gleaned from real Italian intelligence (SISMI) documents dating back to the 1980s concerning Iraq’s yellowcake purchases from Niger during that period are also incorporated into the set of forged documents. [La Repubblica (Rome), 10/24/2005; San Francisco Chronicle, 10/30/2005] But it is unclear who exactly is responsible for the forgeries. In August 2004, the Financial Times will report that according to Rocco Martino, the Italian information peddler who later tries to sell the documents, the documents are fabricated by SISMI, which passes them on to Martino through embassy employee Laura Montini, a paid SISMI asset. [Financial Times, 8/2/2004] In October 2005, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica will suggest the forgery is done by Montini and fellow embassy employee Zakaria Yaou Maiga under the guidance of Martino and Antonio Nucera, the deputy chief of the SISMI center in Viale Pasteur in Rome. [La Repubblica (Rome), 10/24/2005] In 2006, an official investigation will add support to this account, concluding that Montini and Maiga, motivated by money, were indeed the forgers of the documents. [Sunday Times (London), 4/9/2006] SISMI director Nicolo Pollari will later acknowledge that Martino had worked as a SISMI agent in the past, but deny any SISMI involvement in the Iraq-Niger affair. “[Nucera] offered [Martino] the use of an intelligence asset [Montini]—no big deal, you understand—one who was still on the books but inactive—to give a hand to Martino,” Pollari will explain. Author Craig Unger will observe that the issue is, if Pollari is to be believed, just one friend helping another friend by loaning him an intelligence asset to help disseminate forged documents. Martino has a different explanation: “SISMI wanted me to pass on the documents, but they didn’t want anyone to know they had been involved.” The information is quite contradictory. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica will call Martino “a failed carabiniere and dishonest spy,” and a “double-dealer” who “plays every side of the fence.” But Unger will later note that assets like him are valuable precisely because they lack credibility. “If there were a deep-cover unit of SISMI, it would make sense to hire someone like Rocco,” says former DIA analyst Patrick Lang. “His flakiness gives SISMI plausible deniability. That’s standard tradecraft for the agencies.” Until Martino stops talking to journalists in 2005, he will insist he believed the documents were authentic (see Summer 2004). “I sell information, I admit,” he will tell a London reporter. “But I only sell good information.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 236]

After Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler (see Early 1970s) loses his compound to a civil judgment (see 2000), racist millionaire Vincent Bertollini buys him a house in Hayden, Idaho. Butler, beset by age and infirmity as well as the enormous financial burden of the civil judgment, will see the group eventually disintegrate, riven by dissension and rivalry among various members hoping to assume the mantle of leadership. Many Aryan Nations state chapters fold and the organization’s membership dwindles. The members of an Alabama chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, formerly affilates of the Nations, renounce their membership. Montana leader Charles Mangels leaves the organization after Butler accuses Mangels of trying to depose him; Mangels goes on to found a rival organization in Montana. Another rival, August Kreis, insists that he now leads the organization from his Pennsylvania power base. Butler names Neuman Britton, the organization’s California leader, as his eventual successor, but Britton dies shortly thereafter. Butler then chooses Ohio member Harold Ray Redfeairn as his heir apparent. Redfeairn (see Late 1990s) is a poor choice; a paranoid schizophrenic who served prison time for shooting a police officer, he and Kreis attempt to overthrow Butler in an internal coup, and Redfeairn leaves the group. He will return in 2003 and once again be named Butler’s successor, but will die shortly thereafter. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 12/2003; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2010]

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and June 2, 1997) gives up on his appeals and asks to be executed. In an affidavit, McVeigh writes: “I believe I am fully competent to make this decision. If the court thinks that a psychological evaluation is necessary to make certain I am competent, I will submit to such an evaluation. I will not justify or explain my decision to any psychologist, but will answer questions related to my competency.” He acknowledges that he makes his request against the advice of his attorneys, and asks that Judge Richard P. Matsch set an execution date within 120 days. McVeigh’s lawyer Nathan Chambers says that McVeigh has been considering this decision for some time now. “This is not a snap decision,” Chambers says. “The judge is going to want to make a determination that Mr. McVeigh’s decision is a decision he made voluntarily and knowingly.” McVeigh gives no further explanation, though some believe he intends to become a martyr for the far-right “patriot” movement. Eight days later, Matsch grants McVeigh’s request. [Los Angeles Times, 12/13/2000; The Oklahoman, 4/2009; Mayhem (.net), 4/2009]

HCA Inc., the largest for-profit hospital chain in the US, reaches a settlement with the Justice Department over allegations of having defrauded the government. HCA is owned by the family of Senate majority leader Bill Frist. As part of the agreement, the company pleads guilty to 14 criminal counts and agrees to pay more than $840 million in criminal fines, civil penalties, and damages. It is the largest fraud settlement in US history. The Justice Department’s investigation found that the company had employed a variety of schemes to falsely charge or overcharge for services provided to patients covered by federal health plans. HCA billed Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs for lab tests that were not medically necessary or ordered by physicians. It billed the government for non-reimbursable expenses by disguising them as reimbursable “community education” expenses or as “management fees.” Other violations included using incorrect diagnostic codes when billing the government in order to increase its revenue, billing for services rendered to patients who did not qualify to receive them, and billing for services that were never performed. Of the total amount settled upon, $95 million is for violations committed by two HCA subsidiaries, Columbia Homecare Group Inc. and Columbia Management Companies Inc. The two companies had engaged in cost report fraud, fraudulent billing, paying kickbacks to doctors for referrals, and paying kickbacks in connection with the purchase and sale of home health agencies. [CBS News, 12/14/2000; US Department of Justice, 12/14/2002] Not all of the Justice Department’s allegations are resolved in the settlement. In spring 2003, HCA will reach another settlement over allegations of fraudulent cost reporting and kickbacks to physicians for referrals (see June 26, 2003).

Eric D. Hanson, a former Marine, overt racist, and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974), attends a Ku Klux Klan rally in Skokie, Illinois. He refuses to stand behind police barriers and instead mingles in the crowd wearing a shirt depicting a Star of David with a slash through it. Eyewitnesses see him attack an African-American woman as she walks down Old Orchard Road, but Hanson flees before police can apprehend him. [Nicole Nichols, 2003]

Three teenagers affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997) environmental activist group burn down luxury housing units under construction on Long Island, New York. ELF activists take credit for two more fires in the area, along with numerous acts of vandalism, including breaking windows and painting “Meat is Murder” on a McDonald’s corporate office. Suffolk County Detective Charles Dohrenwend says: “We have to devote a lot of energy to this thing because these people are not going away. They are dangerous.” The Long Island housing units are set ablaze with crude, homemade explosive devices at about 6 a.m. No one is injured in the fire. Three houses are damaged by fire and smoke; a fourth has the words “ELF,” “Stop Urban Sprawl,” “If you build it we will burn it,” and “Burn the rich” spray-painted on exterior walls in red paint. Damage is estimated at $35,000 to $40,000. An ELF press release will be sent out the next day claiming that the fires are “an early New Year’s gift to Long Island’s environment destroyers,” and saying ELF is trying to cost “the rich sprawl corporations” enough to force them to stop. ELF has long said that “urban sprawl” causes widespread damage to wildlife habitats and natural features. Local environmentalists condemn the arson, but say overdevelopment of Long Island was still a valid concern, as developers of new housing projects vie for limited open space on which to build. Richard Amper of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society says: “The reaction of these terrorists is wrong. But they are not wrong about the fact of overdevelopment of Long Island. Just because they are behaving like terrorists doesn’t mean we are not overbuilt.” The ELF press release also says that the arson is done in support for a local animal rights activist, Andrew Stepanian, who was recently convicted of throwing a brick through the display windows of a fur store in Huntington. Two months later, three teenagers, Matthew Rammelkamp, George Mashkow, and Jared McIntyre, will plead guilty to setting the fires, and will agree to cooperate with federal authorities investigating ELF. Rammelkamp will say he learned of the site from the ELF Web site. According to Rammelkamp’s testimony, he “obtained and received information from the ELF Web site and used that information in furtherance of that conspiracy. I and others then reported, by press release, those acts.” It is unclear if Rammelkamp, Mashkow, and McIntyre are active members of ELF (which has virtually no hierarchical organizational structure and no official membership lists), independent sympathizers, or merely used the ELF information as an excuse to commit arson. It is common practice for ELF and other such organizations (see 1970s) to post “target” listings on Web sites and, when someone burns or vandalizes those targets, to post news of the actions on the sites. Thomas Liotti, Rammelkamp’s lawyer, will say: “I think these kids had the best of intentions. In no way are they involved in any organized, national ELF effort.… This is a little bit McCarthyesque. What organizations are terrorist organizations? Can 16-year-old kids be charged in federal court?… I don’t think the federal government should be involved in this case. To me, it is nothing more than an arson case, and [Rammelkamp] should be afforded youthful-offender treatment in state court.” Mashkow’s lawyer, Charles C. Russo, will say: “I am not representing an environmental activist. I am representing a 17-year-old misguided kid who basically made the monumental mistake in his life.” Russo will say that Mashkow does not claim membership in ELF and is remorseful for his participation. [New York Times, 1/3/2001; New York Times, 1/8/2001; New York Times, 2/14/2001; New York Times, 2/15/2001; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

Richard Reeves. [Source: Real Clear Politics.com]In his biography of former President Nixon, columnist and historian Richard Reeves sums up the isolation and duplicity that characterized the eight years of the Nixon presidency, particularly the second term after the controversy of the Watergate conspiracy became front-page news. Reeves writes: “Deceived and confused egos… eventually undermined the president.So many layers of lies were needed to protect the secrecy that no one, including the president himself, knew what the truth was anymore. No one inside the White House knew whom or what to believe. There was a chaos of lies at the top. The rings of deception built around the president, [Henry] Kissinger, [H. R.] Haldeman, and [John] Ehrlichman to protect themselves against ‘The Establishment’ as Nixon imagined it, gradually isolated his Cabinet and much of his staff. Colleagues became distrusted parts of the hated bureaucracy, enemies who must be kept away by bodyguards of lies. In the beginning, the idea was to make the president’s world secure from outsiders; in the end, even the insiders themselves could no longer penetrate to reality. There are many lines in the many lies of Nixon’s Oval Office tapes, but two that weave and twist through the plots are attempts to cover up past lies while trying to unravel them at the same time… It comes as no surprise then to learn that all the principals were spying on each other, stealing each other’s papers, tapping each other’s telephones, bugging their own offices. It was hard to keep track of the deceptions, even for the deceivers.… In the end, no one knew whether anyone was telling the truth, the whole truth, or any truth at all.” [Reeves, 2001, pp. 15-16]

Former anti-abortion activist Jerry Reiter, the author of the recent book Live From the Gates of Hell: An Insider’s Look at the Anti-Abortion Underground, gives an interview to the St. Petersburg Times about his book and his days with the controversial anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue (OR—see 1986). Reiter was media coordinator for the group, but after becoming disillusioned with its violent tactics, became an FBI informant, giving the FBI information on OR and other anti-abortion groups. Reiter now says that some respected conservative Christians have tacitly condoned the violence practiced by OR and other anti-abortion groups during the 1990s. “One of the things that surprised me about the Christian Coalition was that even though it publicly denounced the illegal tactics of groups like Operation Rescue,” Reiter wrote, “when the big national anti-abortion protest came to Buffalo in 1992, Operation Rescue National housed its secret command and communication offices in the basement suite of offices that the Christian Coalition of New York had as its state headquarters.” He says that after entering “the secret command post of Operation Rescue, I was given books on dozens of not-so-peaceful activities, including a book by Reverend Michael Bray advocating the bombing of abortion clinics” (see September 1994). Reiter says that many anti-abortion activists “use the Bible to justify all kinds of evil.” He is still against abortion, but does not advocate legal restrictions on the practice. “I want to see abortions reduced,” he says. “Sex education, birth control, and availability of health care options is the way to go. Those people who oppose abortion are often those who oppose sex education, birth control, and other health care options.” Explaining why he became an FBI informant, Reiter says of his OR colleagues, “I realized that these people were very serious about doing harm to people.” He recalls speaking with Paul Hill, who in 1994 murdered an abortion provider and his bodyguard (see July 29, 1994). Weeks before Hill killed the two men, he told Reiter: “What you’re gonna see next now, brother, is an IRA-type reign of terror [referring to the Irish Republican Army]. There’s too much pressure on all of us, too many people watching us to do anything major under direct orders from the national level, so what you’re gonna see is individuals or small groups of people takin’ action in their own hands to do what the leaders want to see done, but since there won’t be any direct orders given, no one can prove conspiracy.” Reiter says his information did not prevent Hill’s murders, but was able to prevent another spate of possibly lethal violence during a 1994 event in Florida. “If I hadn’t done something at the time, it’s likely they would have been successful and hundreds could have been killed.… I had the most unique background. I was able to see the most radical, most dangerous people in the country as they were formulating their plans.” Reiter concludes: “The mainstream anti-abortion movement has shrunk dramatically and now you just see more hard-core people. It’s not a calm situation. The days of the little old ladies with the rosaries have been replaced with this radical, vitriolic group.… The people around Paul Hill, once he is executed (see September 3, 2003), they are planning to rise up and take action. They are planning to give us unprecedented violence.” [St. Petersburg Times, 1/6/2001]

After attacking a police station near Tetova and killing a police officer, the NLA releases a number of demands, including a constitutional amendment to declare that Macedonia is a state of both Macedonians and Albanians. Under the current constitution, Macedonia is a state of ethnic or Slavic Macedonians, and is inhabited by several minority groups, such as Albanians. The Albanian government believes 40 percent of the Macedonian population could be ethnically Albanian, while the 1981 Yugoslav census puts the figure at 19.7 percent. Macedonia’s 2002 census will say Albanians are 25.17 percent of the population. The NLA says “the uniform of the Macedonian occupiers will be targeted until the Albanian people is freed,” and also says, “We call upon the Macedonian police to go back to their families, and not waste their lives in the service of illusory Macedonian plans to dominate the Albanian majority.” [Kola, 2003, pp. 298-299, 377; Phillips, 2004, pp. 80]

The media reports that the Bush White House has apparently been victimized by pranks. During the last days of the Clinton administration, some Clinton officials apparently removed the “W” keys from computer keyboards in the White House and in the Old Executive Office Building, in apparent reference to incoming President George W. Bush’s middle initial. An anonymous White House aide says, “There are dozens, if not hundreds, of keyboards with these missing keys,” and adds: “In some cases the W is marked out, but the most prevalent example is the key being removed. In some cases the W keys have been taped on top of the doorways, which are 12 feet tall.” Chris Lehane, the press secretary for former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, jokes: “My guess is that the White House did not have many reasons to use the letter W over the last couple of years. It’s possible they just fell off because of sheer atrophy.” [Los Angeles Times, 1/23/2001] Lehane laughingly tells the Washington Post, “I think the missing W’s can be explained by the vast left-wing conspiracy now at work.” [Salon, 5/23/2001] In the following days, the reports will mushroom from tales of a harmless prank into allegations of serious and systematic vandalism and theft by Clinton officials, becoming what many will call “Vandalgate,” or the “Clinton vandal scandal” (see January 26, 2001). These reports will be proven to be complete fabrications (see February 8, 2001, February 14, 2001, and May 18, 2001), apparently started by Bush officials and embellished by conservative reporters and pundits in order to besmirch the Clinton administration (see January 25, 2001).

Online columnist Rich Galen, a former Republican strategist who has numerous contacts within the new Bush administration, reports: “Vice President Dick Cheney’s staffers trying to move into the Office of the Vice President space in the Old Executive Office Building right next to the White House found the offices had been left in complete shambles by the Gore staff on its way out on Friday and Saturday (see January 23, 2001). Every cord and wire, in many offices—telephone, power, computer, and lamp—was slashed. Furniture was tossed, and trash was, literally, everywhere. One person [told Galen] that it was his understanding that Mrs. Gore [the wife of former Vice President Gore] had to phone Mrs. Cheney to apologize.” [Mullings, 1/24/2001] Conservative gossip writer Matt Drudge uses Galen’s column and his own White House sources to report that, according to a “close Bush adviser,” the damage went “way beyond pranks, to vandalism.” The Los Angeles Times soon debunks the story of the Gore apology by asking the Gores; Vice President Cheney will also say that the phone call never happened. Galen, however, insists that the apology was indeed made. [Salon, 5/23/2001]

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer says he cannot confirm the extent of the alleged vandalism carried out by Clinton staffers in the last days of the Clinton administration (see January 23, 2001). President Bush intends to change the tone in Washington to a positive one, Fleischer says, and as a result, the White House will not comment on the charges of rampant vandalism and theft. “Whether things were done that were perhaps less gracious than should have been, it is not going to be what President Bush focuses on, nor will it be what his staff focuses on,” he says. “Whatever may have been done, we are going to just put our heads down and look ahead.” [NewsMax, 1/26/2001; Guardian, 1/26/2001]Hints and Innuendos - However, the White House is “cataloguing” the damage allegedly done by Clinton staffers, Fleischer says. When asked what is being catalogued, Fleischer responds: “I choose not to. I choose not to describe what acts were done that we found upon arrival because I think that’s part of changing the tone in Washington.” Sensing more to the story, reporters hone in, asking why make a catalogue “if you’re going to give them a pass,” what the dollar estimate of damage might be, and other questions. When a reporter says, “You’ve got to blame somebody,” Fleischer cuts him off: “President Bush is not going to come to Washington for the point of blaming somebody in this town. And it’s a different way of governing, it’s a different way of leading.” When asked what he knows of the supposed apology offered to Vice President Cheney’s wife by former Vice President Gore’s wife (see January 24, 2001), Fleischer says, “I know that a phone call was made to the vice president’s office, but I really—I don’t recall who made it.” When asked where the majority of the alleged damage was, Fleischer says, “You know, I really stopped paying attention to all the different places.” Finally, when asked whether some of the damage could actually be the result of renovations and normal repairs, Fleischer says, “I don’t think that the people who were professionals, who make their business to go in and prepare a White House for new arrivals, would cut wires.” Fleischer ends the briefing, having given reporters enough hints and implications of severe, widespread vandalism to whet their appetites. [Salon, 5/23/2001]Story Fed by Fleischer, White House Officials - The allegations of vandalism and theft will prove to be almost entirely false (see February 14, 2001 and May 18, 2001). Salon will later report that while Fleischer and other White House officials publicly remain above the fray, in private they are feeding the controversy by giving detailed off-the-record interviews to selected reporters, pundits, and talk show hosts. One White House reporter will later admit that the story was pushed by at least two “unnamed Bush aides.” Salon correspondents Kerry Lauerman and Alicia Montgomery add: “Fleischer and the off-the-record Bush staffers, meanwhile, got a lot of help from a press corps eager for early scoops from a new administration. For some reporters and pundits, the White House vandalism story was just too good to pass up.” [Salon, 5/23/2001] A Washington Post report later states: “A high-level Republican who saw some of the damage said the White House was leery about putting information out about this because chief of staff Andrew Card Jr. did not want to appear to be ratting on the Clinton administration. ‘People wanted to talk about this, and Andy said no,’ an official said.” [Washington Post, 1/26/2001]Stories Debunked - It will not be long before the stories are proven almost entirely false (see February 8, 2001, February 14, 2001, and May 18, 2001).

Fed by stories from unnamed White House officials, the media reports that Air Force One was vandalized and looted by Clinton officials during the aircraft’s last trip with Clinton and former Clinton staffers on board. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell tells viewers, “The Air Force will replace Air Force One glasses and four hand towels, apparently pilfered by passengers traveling with the Clintons on their last plane ride home.” Fox’s Brit Hume says: “The raid that was conducted aboard that Air Force plane, the presidential plane, although it’s not called Air Force One because the president was no longer—Mr. Clinton, Mr. Clinton was no longer president—on the last flight to New York… was stripped bare. The plane’s porcelain, china… and silverware, and salt and pepper shakers, blankets and pillow cases, nearly all items bearing the presidential seal, were taken by Clinton staffers who went along for the ride. The Washington Times quoted a military steward as saying that even a supply of toothpaste was stolen from a compartment under a sink.” CNN’s Kate O’Beirne tells viewers: “During Bill Clinton’s final flight, the plane was stripped bare and not by sentimental staffers seeking mementos. Air Force One souvenirs were quickly posted for auction online. Why not make a final buck off the White House? Outrageous, but not surprising.” [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/21/2001; Salon, 5/23/2001] Weeks later, the story will be debunked by an Andrews Air Force Base spokesman (see February 8, 2001) and by President Bush himself (see February 14, 2001).

The final paragraph of Mike Allen’s Washington Post report on allegations of systematic White House vandalism carried out in the last days of the Clinton administration (see January 26, 2001) states: “Some GOP officials are portraying the damage as a sordid coda to the Clinton years. A Bush campaign official said the White House staff and Secret Service agents welcomed the Bush entourage especially warmly on Saturday. Some of the kitchen staff hugged members of the Bush family, the official said, adding, ‘You could sense an attitude like, “Thank God you’re here.”’” [Washington Post, 1/26/2001]Skepticism of Allen's Reporting - Months later, skeptical Salon reporters Kerry Lauerman and Alicia Montgomery will observe of Allen’s report, “As if the portrait of Clinton’s staff members loading their pickups with White House valuables wasn’t enough, readers were treated to the heartwarming image of a service staff grateful that their rightful rulers had returned.” Desired Effect? - Lauerman and Montgomery will report that Allen’s reporting, and the entire “vandal scandal,” apparently had its desired effect: a rise in positive media approaches to the incoming Bush administration paired with a final slap at the outgoing Clintons. Days after the Allen report, conservative media pundit and publisher William Kristol will tell Fox that the “vandal scandal” worked well for Bush and his conservative supporters: “It’s been really great for Bush to have people—and including many Gore voters, I think—just look up and think, ‘You know what? Maybe I didn’t want Bush to be president, but I am glad that Bill Clinton is gone.’” Lauerman and Alexander will write: “It couldn’t have gone better for members of the incoming Bush administration had they choreographed it themselves. And, in fact, they had” (see January 25, 2001). [Salon, 5/23/2001]

Tony Snow. [Source: Symonsez (.com)]Conservative pundit Tony Snow, who was a speechwriter for the first President Bush, alleges that Clinton aides rampaged through the White House and through Air Force One in the last days of the Clinton administration, leaving wholesale wreckage in both sites—giving Washington “one last White Trash Weekend,” he writes. The White House “was a wreck,” he alleges: “They trashed word processors, left obscene messages on voice-mail machines, cut some phone lines and re-routed others, tinkered with computers, scrawled obscenities on walls, soiled rugs and carpets, tipped over desks, vandalized file cabinets, left nasty messages for their successors—and generally went that extra mile to prove Team Clinton, for all its good and decent public servants, included a record number of punks.” Snow also repeats allegations that Air Force One was subjected to systematic theft, writing that after the presidential plane took former President Clinton and some aides to New York following the inauguration (“loaned graciously by President George W. Bush [after] Clinton insisted on the grand transport because he wanted something befitting his personal grandeur”), the aircraft “looked as if it had been stripped by a skilled band of thieves—or perhaps wrecked by a trailer park twister.” Snow alleges that many items, including silverware, porcelain dishes with the presidential seal, pillows, blankets, and even candy and toothpaste, were stolen from Air Force One by Clinton aides and perhaps the Clintons themselves. “It makes one feel grateful that the seats and carpets are bolted down,” he says. “Nothing better expresses the narcissistic tackiness of the Clinton years than the last-day exit, complete with its kangaroo-court justice, graceless self-celebration, opportunistic abuse of the gift-receiving privilege, and wanton desecration of the nation’s most important political shrine, the White House.” Snow’s assertions are contradicted by officials at Andrews Air Force Base, home of the presidential jets, who tell reporters that nothing is missing from Air Force One. Weeks later, President Bush will acknowledge that nothing was taken from Air Force One (see February 8, 2001 and February 14, 2001). [Jewish World Review, 1/26/2001; Kansas City Star, 5/18/2001] Snow also passes along allegations that the Clintons were given hundreds of thousands of dollars of illicit gifts and contributions, and that First Lady Hillary Clinton posted “a weird variation on a bridal registry, establishing password-protected sites in which contributors could pledge to purchase specific items selected in advance by the Clintons’ design teams for their his ‘n’ hers palazzos.” [Jewish World Review, 1/26/2001] As with the Air Force One allegations, the allegations of vandalism and theft, and the gift registry, will prove to be almost entirely false (see May 18, 2001).

The Bush White House alleges that officials and aides from the outgoing Clinton administration vandalized the White House in the last days before Bush officials took over. Conservative news site NewsMax reports that the “slovenly misfits” of the Clinton administration “left the [White House] in a shambles” in the transition between the outgoing Clinton administration and the incoming Bush administration. Clinton aides engaged in “deliberate vandalism,” the report says, and cites a General Services Administration (GSA) official estimating that it may cost up to $250,000 to repair the damage. NewsMax quotes a report by another conservative publication, the American Spectator, which itself quotes “an inspector… called in to assess the vandalism as saying that several executive desks were damaged to the point that they must be replaced, and several more offices must be repainted because of graffiti.” [Guardian, 1/26/2001; NewsMax, 1/26/2001] Conservative Internet gossip writer Matt Drudge reports that “White House offices [were] left ‘trashed’” and so-called “[p]orn bombs [and] lewd messages” were left behind. No explanation of what Drudge meant by the “porn bomb” allegation is ever given. [Chicago Sun-Times, 1/27/2001] The allegations of vandalism and theft will prove to be almost entirely false (see February 8, 2001, February 14, 2001, and May 18, 2001). Gore's Staffers Charged with Worst of Vandalism - British newspaper The Guardian repeats earlier claims that the worst of the damage was found in offices once occupied by staffers for former Vice President Al Gore, and that Gore’s wife, Tipper, has phoned Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, to apologize for the damage. The story is false (see January 24, 2001). [Guardian, 1/26/2001]Reports: Cut Phone Lines, Extensive Damage, Pornographic Photos - Both the Washington Post and The Guardian report allegations that computer and telephone lines were “sliced,” voice-mail messages were changed to “obscene remarks and lewd greetings,” desks were overturned, and trash strewn throughout the premises. The reports add that filing cabinets were glued shut with Superglue, pornographic photographs displayed in printers, and “filthy graffiti scrawled on at least one hallway wall.” The Spectator’s inspector adds that “[e]ntire computer keyboards will have to be replaced because the damage to them is more extensive than simply missing keys,” referring to allegations that some White House keyboards had the “W” keys pried off. The Spectator also reports tales of former Clinton staffers reportedly “laughing and giggling about the mess their former colleagues left behind.” A Bush White House official calls the White House “a pigsty” in the aftermath of the transition. “The Gore and Clinton people didn’t ‘clean out’ the place because there was nothing clean about what they did before they left.” The GSA will pursue the former Clinton officials for reimbursement and expenses. The Spectator reports that “investigators” conclude the damage was “the result of a carefully organized campaign of vandalism unlike anything ever seen in the aftermath of a presidential transition.” [NewsMax, 1/26/2001; Guardian, 1/26/2001; Washington Post, 1/26/2001] The New York Daily News reports, “The destruction was so vast that a telecommunications staffer with more than a quarter-century of service was seen sobbing near his office one night last week.” [New York Daily News, 1/27/2001] CNN’s Paula Zahn observes: “All right, but this is the White House, for God’s sakes. We’re not talking about people living in a fraternity.” [Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/21/2001] Fox News is particularly vehement in its coverage. “They trash[ed] the place,” says Fox commentator Sean Hannity. ”$200,000 in furniture [was] taken out.” Fellow Fox commentator Oliver North (see May-June, 1989) adds: “We should expect from white trash what they did at the White House.… I recommend that what the Bush White House do is peel the wallpaper off that they defaced with their graffiti and ship it off to the Clinton Library so people can see it.” Fox host Bill O’Reilly says, “I mean, the price tag right now is about $200,000, so that’s a felony right there.” And O’Reilly guest Tom Schatz says, referring to the famous film about fraternity life, “They turned it into Animal House.” [Knight Ridder, 2/8/2001; Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, 5/21/2001]Air Force One 'Stripped Bare,' Reports Claim - The Guardian also reports that during former President Clinton’s last trip in Air Force One, the presidential jet was subjected to what it calls “an orgy of pilfering” (see January 25-27, 2001). It was “stripped bare” by aides, who reportedly took china, silverware, salt and pepper shakers, and other items, most bearing the presidential seal. [Guardian, 1/26/2001] On Fox, Hannity charges, “They strip[ped] Air Force One of the china and everything else that wasn’t bolted down.” [Knight Ridder, 2/8/2001]Clinton Officials Admit to 'Pranks,' Bush Officials Allege Attempts at Theft - Clinton and Gore officials deny the reports of vandalism, but admit to carrying out pranks such as removing the “W” keys and affixing satirical signs to office doors that read, “Office of Strategery,” “Office of Subliminable Messages,” and “Division of Uniting.” A former Clinton official says, “It’s childish, but it’s also funny.” However, a senior Bush official accuses Clinton staffers of attempting to steal White House paintings and official seals from doors, and attempting to have those items shipped to themselves; Bush officials have ordered that all packages leaving the White House be X-rayed. [Washington Post, 1/26/2001]Bush Aide Documenting Damages - A Bush White House aide has been delegated to document the vandalism, videos are being taken of the damages, and White House officials are being interviewed. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer has confirmed that the administration is reviewing reports of the alleged vandalism. [NewsMax, 1/26/2001] Bush himself downplays the reports, saying: “There might have been a prank or two, maybe somebody put a cartoon on the wall, but that’s okay. It’s time now to move forward.” [New York Daily News, 1/27/2001]

Former President Clinton asks aides to investigate reports of vandalism alleged to have been perpetrated by outgoing members of his staff (see January 25-27, 2001 and January 26, 2001). If warranted, Clinton says he and his former officials will “make amends.” Clinton spokesman Jake Siewert says that Bush officials declined to allow Clinton officials to examine the reported damage: “We made an offer to go over and survey what was done—take a look and see if we can make amends. We asked to take a look at the damage and offered to try to sort it out. They said that it was isolated incidents and that that would not be necessary.” [Los Angeles Times, 1/30/2001] The allegations of vandalism and theft will prove to be almost entirely false (see February 8, 2001, February 14, 2001, and May 18, 2001).

Brian Cass. [Source: SuperVegan (.com)]David Blenkinsop and two other masked members of Britain’s Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC—see 1998) animal rights organization beat Brian Cass, the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) with bats; a passerby who intercedes is sprayed in the face with tear gas. SHAC has for years accused HLS of abusing and torturing animals in its research efforts. American SHAC leader Kevin Kjonaas (see 1999 and After) says: “I don’t shed any tears for Brian Cass. He is responsible for 500 animals agonizing and dying every day at Huntingdon.” [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and June 2, 1997) says he has no objection to having his upcoming execution (see June 11-13, 1997) televised. In a letter published by the Daily Oklahoman, McVeigh questions the fairness of limiting the number of witnesses to his execution, set for May 16 (see January 16, 2001); the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBP) is considering allowing survivors and relatives of his victims to view his execution via closed-circuit broadcast. “Because the closed-circuit telecast of my execution raises these fundamental equal access concerns, and because I am otherwise not opposed to such a telecast, a reasonable solution seems obvious: hold a true public execution—allow a public broadcast,” McVeigh writes. “It has… been said that all of Oklahoma was a victim of the bombing. Can all of Oklahoma watch?” McVeigh’s attorney Robert Nigh Jr. says McVeigh is serious about his request. “He is in favor of public scrutiny of government action, including his execution,” Nigh says. FBP spokesperson Dan Dunne says of the idea of a public broadcast of McVeigh’s execution: “It hasn’t been considered. It won’t happen.” Nigh says that the idea of a publicly broadcast execution is not unreasonable, stating, “If it is our collective judgment that capital punishment is a reasonable response to crime, we need to come to grips with what it actually is.” [ABC News, 2/11/2001; New York Times, 2/11/2001]

Knight Ridder is the first newspaper publisher to express public skepticism over White House and media reports of the Clinton “vandal scandal,” which allege that Clinton staffers vandalized and looted the White House and Air Force One in the last days of the Clinton administration (see January 25, 2001 and January 26, 2001). “It was a news story that had a lot going for it,” Knight Ridder correspondent David Goldstein writes, “except on-the-record sources and many hard facts.” Goldstein calls the “vandal scandal” reporting “an example of post-election political warfare waged on a slapstick level” and “clearly a sample of how journalism in Washington is practiced in the age of the 24-hour news cycle and its unceasing demand for information, sometimes regardless of the provenance.” Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism says, “The dirty little secret of the information revolution is often there’s not a lot of verification.” Earlier in the week, US News and World Report printed a story alleging that the White House is spending $10,000 a day repairing the White House telephone system after it was damaged by Clinton staffers, but a White House spokesman responded, “I can’t find any supporting evidence” of that charge. “No one can confirm it.” As for allegations that Clinton staffers looted Air Force One (see January 25-27, 2001), Lieutenant Colonel Dana Carroll of Andrews Air Force Base, which houses the presidential jet, says: “The public was misinformed. There was no china or anything like that missing.” Carroll says the only items missing from Air Force One after the Clintons’ final trip was a tray of 15 glasses, which Clinton staffers say broke during a moment of turbulence; reporters on the aircraft saw the glasses fall and break. Former Clinton strategist James Carville says the reports are little more than efforts to smear Clinton. “It just seems to be like everything else that happens to this president,” he says. Referring to the Whitewater investigations, Carville adds, “Next they’ll be calling for an independent counsel, bring back Ken Starr to investigate this.” House Republican Bob Barr (R-GA) is asking that the General Accounting Office investigate the story (see May 18, 2001). [Knight Ridder, 2/8/2001] In July, Goldstein will call the “vandal scandal” stories “questionable from the beginning.” [American Journalism Review, 7/2001]

President Bush tells reporters that Air Force One was not looted and/or vandalized by Clinton staffers, as reports have alleged (see January 25-27, 2001 and January 26, 2001). “I will tell you one thing, just in terms of the former president,” he says. “All the allegations that they took stuff off of Air Force One is simply not true, for example.” Bush says he was told by Air Force One’s chief steward that the stories were false. [Salon, 2/14/2001] Bush’s statement follows confirmation by an Andrews Air Force Base spokesman that nothing had been stolen from Air Force One (see February 8, 2001).

John Derbyshire. [Source: John Derbyshire]National Review columnist John Derbyshire “satirically” advocates the murder of Chelsea Clinton, the only daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton, in order to stamp out the Clinton bloodline once and for all. Former President Clinton has left the White House, to spend the rest of his life “goosing waitresses [and] defending himself in court.” Hillary “has no future beyond the US Senate… [she is] maxed out.” But, he warns, “Clintonism may yet rise again.… On February 27th, Chelsea Clinton will turn 21.” 'I Hate Chelsea Clinton' - Derbyshire confesses: “I hate Chelsea Clinton. I admit it’s not easy to justify my loathing of this person. I can pick out causes, but none of them is one hundred per cent rational.… I admit, I hate Chelsea because she is a Clinton.” After noting the negative reactions to his previous attack on the younger Clinton’s physical appearance, he acknowledges that she hasn’t committed the “array of crimes” her father is allegedly responsible for, but “she doesn’t deserve any credit for not having done these things; she just hasn’t had time yet.” He writes that since she was 18, she has “sign[ed] on to the Great Clinton Project. Which is, has always been, and forever will be, to enrich the family from the public fisc, and to lie, bomb, bribe, and intimidate your way out of trouble when necessary.” 'Sippenhaft' - Derbyshire notes that in totalitarian societies of the past, many people were executed merely because of their family connections, and says the same should be considered for Chelsea Clinton. “Chelsea is a Clinton,” he writes. “She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past—I’m not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble—recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin’s penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an ‘enemy of the people.’ The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, ‘clan liability.’ In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished ‘to the ninth degree’: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed, and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.… We don’t, of course, institutionalize such principles in our society, and a good thing too. Our humanity and forbearance, however, has a cost. The cost is that the vile genetic inheritance of Bill and Hillary Clinton may live on to plague us in the future. It isn’t over, folks.” [National Review, 2/15/2001]'Hysterical Idiots' - After a week of angry criticism, Derbyshire will write a column defending his original column as “satire,” blaming “liberals” for “missing the joke,” and admitting his column “wasn’t meant to be a thigh-slapper. I had a point to make: There could be another Clinton in our future, and on present evidence (admittedly rather scant), it would be a chip off the old block. That’s fair comment. However, my tone was partly tongue in cheek.… Humor and irony are especially tricky.” He asks, rhetorically, if he intends to apologize, and answers himself: “In your dreams. I make it a point of principle never to apologize to hysterical idiots.” [National Review, 2/22/2001]

Richard Humphreys, a self-proclaimed prophet from Oregon who is described in media reports as “delusional,” is arrested in Watertown, South Dakota, for making a joke about a “burning bush.” Humphreys, who sometimes calls himself “Israel Humphreys,” gets into a barroom discussion with a truck driver; the bartender overhears the conversation and alerts the police, telling them that Humphreys discussed a “burning Bush” and the possibility of someone pouring flammable liquid on President Bush and lighting it. Bush is slated to visit Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the day after Humphreys’s barroom conversation. Humphreys is charged with threatening to kill or harm the president. During his trial, Humphreys will explain: “I said God might speak to the world through a ‘burning Bush.’ I had said that before and I thought it was funny. It was prophetizing.” The court will learn that Humphreys had made similar statements in Internet chat rooms, including the following: “If you hear that a man runs up and throws gasoline and a match to Bush you will know that God did speak through the burning Bush.” He has also sent similar statements to the Bush White House via fax machines, and during the Clinton administration expressed the desire that President Clinton and his wife Hillary Clinton would commit suicide. Humphreys will be convicted and sentenced to 37 months in prison. He will appeal his conviction, saying his comment is a prophecy protected under his right to free speech. His appeal is denied, but the appellate court will find that he suffers from a bipolar disorder and order that he serve his sentence in a federal medical center. “Hopefully, medication over a significant period of years will result in his being able to live outside the prison confines, free of delusions and the type of behavior he exhibited here,” the court will rule. [Associated Press, 12/6/2002; Associated Press, 12/23/2003]

New Mexico’s state legislature passes Senate Bill 204, which revokes the state’s lifetime ban on convicted felons exercising the right to vote. Before the passage of the bill, a New Mexico citizen convicted of a felony could never vote again. Under the new law, ex-felons who have completed their sentences, as well as offenders who have completed probation or parole, are automatically allowed to register to vote. No application process is enacted. This law reinstates the rights of some 50,000 New Mexico citizens to vote. [New Mexico Legislature, 2001 ; ProCon, 10/19/2010]

Jayna Davis, appearing on a Fox News broadcast. [Source: Libertarian Republican (.com)]Former investigative reporter Jayna Davis, who once worked for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City, tells Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly she has amassed evidence that she says proves Osama bin Laden was behind the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). Former Army soldier Timothy McVeigh is awaiting execution for carrying out the bombing (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997). Davis says that she attempted to give her evidence, comprised of court records, 24 witness statements, and reports from law enforcement, intelligence, and terror experts, to the FBI, which she says refused to accept the material. Davis says the FBI is involved in an elaborate conspiracy to conceal the existence of a Middle Eastern terror cell that carried out the bombing; law enforcement authorities have long dismissed the idea (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After) that the bombing was carried out by anyone other than McVeigh and his accomplice Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998). According to Davis’s version of events, a Middle Eastern terror cell was operating only blocks away from the Murrah Federal Building, the site of the bombing, and an Iraqi national who formerly served in Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard was in contact with McVeigh on the day of the bombing. It was the Iraqi, not McVeigh, she says, who drove the Ryder truck containing the bomb to the federal building; he fled in a brown Chevrolet pickup truck. Davis says in the minutes after the bombing, an all-points bulletin was issued for the Iraqi, but it was inexplicably withdrawn shortly thereafter. Davis says the conspiracy consists of McVeigh, Nichols, and at least seven Middle Eastern men, with bin Laden masterminding the operation. “The evidence we have gathered definitely implicates McVeigh and Nichols,” she says. “I want to make that very clear. They were in it up to their eyeballs.” Of the FBI’s refusal to consider her evidence, she tells O’Reilly: “I was flabbergasted. I am unable to imagine any reason they would not accept it.” [WorldNetDaily, 3/21/2001]

Stephen Jones, who represented convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997), says in an op-ed for the Daily Oklahoman he is willing to testify under oath that McVeigh did not act alone in the bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). During McVeigh’s trial, Jones insisted that there was evidence of a larger conspiracy, perhaps involving domestic far-right militia groups and perhaps Islamist radicals. Jones says he is willing to testify on behalf of Terry Nichols, McVeigh’s accomplice (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998), who is facing 160 counts of murder in an Oklahoma state court (see September 5, 2001). Jones refuses to say whether either McVeigh or Nichols were actually involved in the conspiracy, stating: “At this point, it’s not appropriate for me to name names or to go into detail in the media. There are pending proceedings.” However, he tells a reporter for The Oklahoman, “If McVeigh is saying he acted alone, that is inconsistent with what he told me.” Any such claim of sole responsibility, Jones says, would be inconsistent with his understanding of the case “and certainly contrary to many statements Tim McVeigh made to me while I was his attorney.” Such a claim, he says, “would be nothing more than an effort to obstruct justice in pending judicial proceedings.… If I remain silent, my silence could be taken… as condoning what he has said and I can’t do that.” Jones says his possible testimony would not violate attorney-client privilege, as he no longer represents McVeigh; moreover, Jones says, McVeigh gave up attorney-client privilege when he attacked Jones in a lawsuit last year (see August 14-27, 1997). [Reuters, 3/26/2001]

Esquire Magazine publishes a number of letters written by convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) to Phil Bacharach, a former reporter for the Oklahoma Gazette. Most of the material in the letters is trivial, with McVeigh joking about his favorite television shows and complaining about conditions in his cell, but at least one letter touches on his anger about the children who died in the Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). Nowhere in the letters does he discuss the bombing that killed 168 people, including 19 children. Bacharach, who now works as press secretary for Governor Frank Keating (R-OK), corresponded with McVeigh for two years before joining Keating’s staff, when the letter exchanges were terminated. Bacharach says that anyone looking for answers regarding the bombing will not find them in the letters. “It is beyond me to reconcile the Timothy McVeigh who murdered 168 people with the writer of these letters,” he writes. “True, this correspondence offers only a small window through which to look. I do know one thing: In the written word, at least, he has not a whisper of conscience.” The letters were written while McVeigh was incarcerated at a “supermax” penitentiary in Florence, Colorado; he now awaits execution in a federal prison in Indiana. According to the letters, McVeigh is fond of The Simpsons, King of the Hill, and Star Trek, and was not happy when he was moved from the cell he kept spotlessly clean to a cell “brutally thrashed by a pig inmate,” a leader of the Latin Kings street gang. He mocks Oklahoma County District Attorney Bob Macy, who had promised to try McVeigh on 160 state counts of murder, calling him “Bozo” and “a punk.” He calls the FBI “wizards at propaganda” who manipulated the facts of the Branch Davidian tragedy. A letter from November 26, 1996 sheds some light on McVeigh’s feelings about the Davidian tragedy, and may help explain his rationale for the bombing. In that letter, he wrote: “The public never saw the Davidians’ home video of their cute babies, adorable children, loving mothers, or protective fathers. Nor did they see pictures of the charred remains of children’s bodies. Therefore, they didn’t care when these families died a slow, tortuous death at the hands of the FBI.” Bacharach says it was an unwritten rule between them that they not discuss the bombing. Bacharach says in the letter exchange, he hoped to understand “what made a person who didn’t seem like evil-incarnate commit that evil act.” That never happened, he writes. “It is this fact—that he was not dead behind the eyes, a sheer lunatic—that troubles me the most. He didn’t have the right to be normal, glib, and pleasant, I thought. He owed the dead of Oklahoma City the decency of at least showing his evil.” [Associated Press, 3/27/2001]

FBI agent Danny Defenbaugh, the lead investigator in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing case (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After 9:02 a.m., April 19, 1995), tells a CNN reporter that convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) was planning subsequent attacks to follow the first bombing. He also says that there was no way McVeigh could not have known that his target, the Murrah Federal Building, had children inside. “There were other federal buildings that were mentioned,” Defenbaugh says, referring to potential targets in Dallas and Omaha. The FBI, after finding some of the storage units McVeigh and his co-conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) used to store explosives, conducted an intensive search for other stores of explosives. “We sent out within two weeks of that letters to every storage facility in the United States,” he says, but notes that nothing turned up. “It was, and still is, probably the largest, most labor-intensive investigation ever conducted by the FBI.” As for the children being in the building, Defenbaugh says, “No matter what and how you go by that building, if you look at the building, you’re going to see all the little cut-out hands, all the little apples and flowers showing that there’s a kindergarten there—that there are children in that building.” Defenbaugh says the most frequent question he hears is whether others were involved in the conspiracy, usually referring to the now-infamous “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995). Defenbaugh says that security camera footage from a McDonald’s (see 3:00 - 5:00 p.m. April 17, 1995) indicates that McVeigh carried out the bombing by himself. “There was no one else who came in [to the restaurant] with him, who was involved with him, who sat with him, who talked with him, who left with him, no indication whatsoever that there was anyone else,” he says. Defenbaugh notes that McVeigh is a pariah, even to anti-government militia groups, saying: “He’s not a martyr. He’s a cold-blooded killer.” [CNN, 3/28/2001]

The Christian Defense Coalition (CDC) urges the Bush administration to show “restraint” in its handling of the arrest of accused murderer James Kopp, whose anti-abortion beliefs triggered his shooting of Dr. Barnett Slepian (see March 29, 2001). The CDC says that the “vast majority of the pro-life community” condemns violence against abortion doctors such as Slepian, and urges Attorney General John Ashcroft and the Department of Justice “not to use this episode to harass and intimidate the pro-life movement as the Clinton administration did” (see May 1994 and January 1996), and makes the same request of pro-choice organizations. The CDC also urges the general public to remember that Kopp is “innocent until proven guilty.” [Christian Defense Coalition, 3/29/2001]

French authorities arrest anti-abortion advocate James Kopp, who is wanted for the 1998 murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian (see October 23, 1998). The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have been hunting for Kopp since the murder, and tracked him through a Brooklyn couple, Dennis Malvasi and his wife Loretta Marra, who are arrested for conspiring to aid and abet Slepian’s murder. (Malvasi has been convicted of bombing an abortion clinic; Marra and Kopp have been arrested together at a number of anti-abortion protests.) Shortly after Slepian’s murder, the FBI found Kopp’s sniper rifle buried behind Slepian’s home; investigators also found Kopp’s automobile in a suburb of Slepian’s home town of Amherst. Currently Kopp is being held in Rennes, where he is refusing to answer questions; French authorities have not yet decided whether to extradite him, as French law precludes extradition of anyone who may face the death penalty. In March, the FBI learned that Kopp was living in Ireland under a series of false identities and surviving by doing menial labor. In mid-March, Kopp fled Ireland on a ferry that took him to Brittany, a rural French province. It is there that he is arrested, in the medieval Breton town of Dinan. Kopp is also wanted for three non-fatal shooting ambushes of doctors in Canada and in Rochester, New York. [Guardian, 4/1/2001; National Abortion Federation, 2010]Help from Irish Anti-Abortion Groups - Irish pro-life groups deny helping Kopp, but an FBI spokesman says, “He did not leave the US without assistance, and he did not remain a fugitive without assistance.” Later evidence will show that Kopp was assisted by American and Irish anti-abortion advocates in Ireland, many of whom are affiliated with the right-wing breakaway Catholic sect headed by excommunicated Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. In 2001, The Nation will observe, “In the last half-decade US antiabortion campaigners have moved on Ireland in a big way, introducing a militancy previously unknown there.” [Nation, 4/23/2001; National Abortion Federation, 2010]Pro-Choice Spokesman: Kopp Part of a Larger Conspiracy - National Abortion Federation head Vicki Saporta says in a statement: “The arrest of James Kopp could potentially be the greatest advance in the effort to end violence against abortion providers in this country and in Canada. Law enforcement officials are now uncovering what we have been asserting for years: the existence of an organized network of anti-choice extremists who assist terrorists in carrying out acts of violence against abortion providers.… The Army of God (see 1982) has in large part been responsible for the reign of terror against abortion providers in the last decade. This is the best opportunity we’ve had to finally identify, expose, and prosecute those individuals who are part of this extreme network.… We have been collecting statistics on violence against abortion providers for more than 20 years, and we know that there are individuals who provide money, safe houses, and other support to those who have committed acts of terrorism against abortion providers. These terrorists do not work alone, and we now have an important opportunity to reduce the violence and harassment that abortion providers in this country face on a daily basis.… Now is the time to uncover the ring of extremists who are part of the Army of God and reduce the violence against abortion providers once and for all.” [National Abortion Federation, 3/30/2001]Confession and Conviction - Kopp will be extradited over a year later (see June 5, 2002 and After). He will confess to the murder shortly afterward (see November 21, 2002) and will be pronounced guilty in 2003 (see March 17-18, 2003).

The people who died in the Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), even the children and babies, were merely “collateral damage,” according to Timothy McVeigh, who is awaiting execution for his role in the bombing (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997). McVeigh admitted to his participation in the bombing to two Buffalo News reporters, Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, who wrote the book American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. The book is due to be published within days. “I understand what they felt in Oklahoma City,” McVeigh told the authors. “I have no sympathy for them.” The authors quote McVeigh as saying: “I recognized beforehand that someone might be bringing their kid to work. However, if I had known there was an entire day care center, it might have given me pause to switch targets. That’s a large amount of collateral damage.” CNN reported that according to Danny Defenbaugh, the FBI’s lead investigator in the case, there was no doubt that McVeigh knew there would be children among his victims (see March 28, 2001). In an ABC News interview, the authors say that McVeigh “never expressed one ounce of remorse” for his victims in their interviews with him, though they witnessed him become emotional over his remembrance of killing a gopher. According to the authors, McVeigh regrets only that the deaths of the children detracted from his message about the Ruby Ridge (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992) and Waco (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992) debacles. McVeigh told the authors, using a reference to the song “Dirty for Dirty” by Bad Company: “What the US government did at Waco and Ruby Ridge was dirty. I gave dirty back to them at Oklahoma City.” The authors note that McVeigh said the triggering event for him was the government’s ban on some types of assault weapons (see September 13, 1994): when that happened, McVeigh told them, “I snapped.” Dr. John Smith, a psychiatrist who evaluated McVeigh, asked McVeigh why he continued with the bombing even though he knew children were in the building. “[H]e said, ‘One, the date was too important to put off,’” Smith says, noting that the date of the bombing, April 19, was the two-year anniversary of the Branch Davidian debacle, “and he went into a tirade about all the children killed at Waco.” According to Michel and Herbeck, McVeigh told them he alone planned the bombing, and when his accomplice Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) began to show reluctance in continuing (see March 1995 and March 31 - April 12, 1995), he forced him to keep working with him by threatening his family (legal sources dispute that claim, noting that Nichols never raised the idea of coercion in his defense). McVeigh denied that anyone else took part in the bombing, quoting a line from the movie A Few Good Men: “You can’t handle the truth.” McVeigh continued, “Because the truth is, I blew up the Murrah Building, and isn’t it kind of scary that one man could wreak this kind of hell?” He also told the authors that he was disappointed the building did not come down entirely, saying: “Damn, I didn’t knock the building down. I didn’t take it down.” McVeigh told the authors he knew he would get caught and even anticipated execution as a form of “state-assisted suicide.” Yet he worried initially about snipers as he was being charged. “He was ready to die but not at that moment—he wanted to make sure that his full message got out first,” Herbeck says. [New York Times, 3/29/2001; Associated Press, 3/29/2001; Oklahoma City Journal Record, 3/29/2001; Washington Post, 3/30/2001]

DVD cover illustration of the film ‘Soldiers in the Army of God.’ [Source: HBO / St. Pete for Peace]Cable movie provider HBO airs a documentary, Soldiers in the Army of God, focusing on the violent anti-abortion movement (see 1982, Early 1980s, August 1982, and July 1988) and three of its leaders. National Public Radio airs a profile of the documentary, featuring an interview with the film’s producers, Marc Levin, Daphne Pinkerson, and Daniel Voll. According to Voll, the film focuses on three members of the “Army of God”: young recruit Jonathan O’Toole, who says he was looking for the most “radical” and “terroristic” anti-abortion group he could find; Neal Horsley, who runs an anti-abortion Web site; and long-haul trucker Bob Lokey, who recruits new members. 'Violent Fringe' of Anti-Abortion Opposition - Voll describes the three as part of the “violent fringe” of anti-abortion opposition: “These are the guys on the ground who are—whatever the words that politicians and other leaders of these cultural wars can put out there, these are the men who hear them and feel emboldened by them, who feel encouraged by each other, and they are every day praying for God’s will in their life.” Another unidentified man says: “Anybody who raises a weapon up against these people who are slaughtering these babies, before God and the entire world, right now I say you are doing God’s own work. And may the power of God be with you as you aim that rifle. You’re squeezing that trigger for Almighty God.” In the documentary, an unidentified anti-abortion activist says: “There are people in this world right now who are looking for directions on what do we do. Well, we end abortion on demand by the most direct means available to us. So stop the abortion with a bullet, if that’s what it takes. Stop it with a bomb, if that’ s what it takes. You stop abortion on demand. Don’t let it go any farther.” O’Toole says that the “next step is to arm ourselves in a militia, a real militia that has the power to resist the federal government.” Pinkerson says that O’Toole, who was 19 when he joined the Army of God, found Horsley on the Internet through Horsley’s Web site, “The Nuremberg Files,” which lists doctors who perform abortions (see January 1997). O’Toole became Horsley’s assistant, and through him met Lokey, who runs a Web site called “Save the Babies.” In the film, O’Toole, whom the producers speculate may eventually become an assassin of abortion providers, says that because of America’s legalization of abortion, the country has become like “Nazi Germany. It’s like you’ve got concentration camps around you.” Levin notes that filmed conversations between Horsley and Lokey show that many in the movement feel threatened by the concept of women’s equality, and blame men’s failure to exert “dominion” over women as part of the reason why the US legalized abortion. [National Public Radio, 3/30/2001; Womens eNews, 3/30/2001]Opposition to Homosexuality - Horsley draws a connection between the organization’s opposition to abortion and the American citizenry’s supposed opposition to homosexuality, saying: “If the American people woke up, and realized that they had to choose between legalized abortion, legalized homosexuality, and legalized all the rest of the desecration or civil war which would cause the rivers to run red with blood—hey, you know we will see legalized abortion go like that! We’ll see legalized homosexuality go like that! Because the American people are not willing to die for homosexuals.” Bringing Bomb-Making Materials to Washington - The film also shows Lokey bragging to convicted clinic bomber Michael Bray (see September 1994) that he has just trucked 45,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a substance that can be used to make “fertilizer bombs” similar to the one that destroyed an Oklahoma City federal building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), into Washington, DC. Anti-Abortion Opposition Part of an 'Apocalyptic' Death Struggle - Author and reporter Frederick Clarkson writes: “At once shocking, compelling, and beautifully made, the film is essentially the national television debut for the aboveground spokesmen and spokeswomen of the Army of God.… Horsley and others are quite clear in their public statements and their writings that the attacks on clinics and the murders of doctors are but warning shots in what they envision as an epochal, even an apocalyptic struggle at hand. Either Americans conform to their view of God’s laws, or there will be a blood bath, they say. And there is no evidence that they are anything but dead serious.” [Womens eNews, 3/30/2001]

Randy Weaver, the white separatist who was at the heart of the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff with the FBI (see August 31, 1992), says the reasons given by convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) for the bombing ring hollow. A book titled American Terrorist, based on prison interviews given by McVeigh to two reporters, claims that McVeigh targeted a federal building in retaliation for the Ruby Ridge (see August 21-31, 1992) and Branch Davidian (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) tragedies (see March 29, 2001). Weaver is not buying it. “McVeigh took the law into his own hands,” he tells a reporter. “He had justified it in his own mind. I don’t agree with him at all. He has more anger in him than I do, and I don’t know how that could be.” Weaver’s wife and son died by FBI gunfire during the siege. A federal marshal was also killed in the standoff. [Associated Press, 3/31/2001]

Anti-government groups believe that convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) was a brainwashed “patsy” who undermined them, and is not a martyr to their cause, according to experts who monitor the groups. McVeigh is awaiting execution at an Indiana prison. Mark Pitcavage, who tracks right-wing hate groups for the Anti-Defamation League, says: “They view Timothy McVeigh as a patsy, as a sort of Lee Harvey Oswald type. Why hasn’t he come clean? Because he’s been brainwashed, [the groups believe,] and the government wants to execute him before he can wake up.” The Oswald comparison refers to the belief that some have that Oswald was an innocent man framed for the killing of President John F. Kennedy. Some anti-government extremists say that McVeigh was programmed by government agents to cause dissension among anti-government groups, and to give the government an excuse to crack down on the groups. Even so, some experts warn, some anti-government and militia groups will choose April 19, the date of the bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), as a day to recognize and to possibly carry out further violence. Political scientist Evan McKenzie says, “Every April 19, everyone should hold their breath.” [Reuters, 4/5/2001]

The White House fails to produce the documentation it says it has compiled on the so-called Clinton “vandal scandal,” the allegations that Clinton staffers looted and vandalized the White House, Air Force One, and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, in the last days of the Clinton administration (see January 26, 2001). As a result, the General Accounting Office (GAO) is unable to pursue an investigation of the allegations as requested by Bush officials. In January, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters that the White House was compiling a “catalogue” of damages and missing items; in recent days, Fleischer has said that no actual list was being documented, but instead White House staffers (or a single staffer, Fleischer is unclear) were keeping track of the damages “in their heads.” In a letter responding to the GAO’s March request for details about “damage that may have been deliberately caused” by the Clinton administration, Phillip Larsen, a special assistant to the president, tells GAO official Bernard Ungar: “After investigation, we have located no such record. And our repair records do not contain information that would allow someone to determine the cause of the damage that is being repaired.” [Knight Ridder, 6/4/2001]

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) says that he bombed the Murrah Federal Building (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) after considering a plan to assassinate Attorney General Janet Reno. McVeigh’s statement comes in a written response he gives to questions submitted by Fox News reporter Rita Cosby. McVeigh calls the bombing both a retaliatory strike and a pre-emptive one against an “increasingly militaristic and violent federal government.” Last month, McVeigh’s admission of his role in the bombing was made public by two reporters, in which he called the deaths of children in the blast “collateral damage” (see March 29, 2001). McVeigh provides the answers to the Fox reporters’ questions to make sure his motives for setting the bomb are clear. “I explain this not for publicity,” he writes. “I explain so that the record is clear as to my thinking and motivations in bombing a government installation.” He notes again that the date of April 19 was chosen to reflect the date of the Branch Davidian debacle (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After), calling the government’s assault on the Davidian compound the equivalent of the Chinese government’s “deploying tanks against its own citizens.” McVeigh says he waited two years for the government to correct its “abuse of power,” and became angry when “they actually gave awards and bonus pay to those agents involved, and conversely, jailed the survivors of the Waco inferno after the jury wanted them set free” (see January-February 1994). McVeigh says he observed what he calls “multiple and ever-more aggressive raids across the country” by the government that constituted what he calls an unacceptable pattern of behavior. He says violent action against the government became an option for him only after protest marches, letter-writing campaigns, and media awareness “failed to correct the abuse.” His first thought was “a campaign of assassination,” including Reno, Judge Walter Smith, who handled the Branch Davidian trial, and Lon Horiuchi, the FBI agent who shot to death the wife of white separatist Randy Weaver during the Ruby Ridge siege (see August 31, 1992 and August 21-31, 1992). Assassinating Reno, McVeigh says, would “mak[e] her accept ‘full responsibility’ in deed, not just word,” for the Davidian disaster. But, he says, federal agents are merely soldiers, and he decided to strike against them at what he calls one of their command centers. The bombing, he says, was “morally and strategically equivalent to the US hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations,” and therefore was acceptable for that reason. “I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government,” he writes. “Based on the observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option.” Asked about calling the children slain in the blast “collateral damage,” McVeigh writes: “Collateral Damage? As an American news junkie; a military man; and a Gulf War Veteran, where do they think I learned that (It sure as hell wasn’t Osami [sic] Bin Laden!)” [Fox News, 4/26/2001; Associated Press, 4/27/2001; New York Times, 4/27/2001; Fox News, 4/27/2001]

Binyam Mohamed, a 23-year old Muslim of Ethiopian descent residing in London, flies to Pakistan to experience Islam in its “purest form” as practiced by the Taliban. Mohamed, who was abandoned by his family in London when he was 15, is a former heroin addict and desultory college student who turned to the local mosque as a way to avoid his drug-using friends. He will later claim, “I really had no idea what it was” that the Taliban espoused; he goes to Afghanistan on the advice of some in the mosque. After arriving in Pakistan, he sneaks into Afghanistan in the back of a truck. He will later say that he learns about the Muslim rebels in Chechnya from sympathizers in Jalalabad, and determines to aid the Muslim cause, but, he claims, as an aid worker, not a terrorist or Taliban fighter. Yet he agrees to undergo basic training in Afghanistan for fighters. He will later say: “I was told that the Russians don’t separate between aid workers and those doing the fighting, and that if I wanted to go to Chechnya, I needed basic training. I was so young, I didn’t question it. I didn’t expect to fire a gun except in training, let alone kill someone.… I would never have taken up arms against British or American soldiers, let alone attacked civilians. I wanted to protect civilians, not kill them.” He completes a 45-day “boot camp” course, where, he will later say, he learned nothing to do with terrorism, such as bomb-making techniques. But instead of traveling to Chechnya, he goes to Kabul, where he contracts malaria. He is in the hospital when he learns of the 9/11 attacks. He thinks Afghanistan will soon be under attack from Western forces, and, he will later say, decides to leave for London before the fighting can start (see September 2001 - April 9, 2002). “All I wanted to do was to get back to London, to the country that I thought of as home, to continue my education and find a job; to get back to my life, minus the drugs,” he will say. [Daily Mail, 3/8/2009]

An investigative report commissioned by Charles Key (R-OK), a former Oklahoma legislator with ties to regional militia organizations, will conclude that the government’s investigation into the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) was riddled with omissions and errors. Key informs WorldNetDaily (WND), a conservative news Web site, of the upcoming report’s conclusions. Key helped convene a grand jury investigation in 1998 to look into questions surrounding the bombing; when the jury found no evidence of a larger conspiracy, as Key had hoped it would (see December 30, 1998), he denounced the jury’s findings and created the Oklahoma Bombing Investigation Committee, an independent body that conducted the investigation and wrote the report. Key says he hopes the report will help Americans finally “get to the truth” behind the bombing conspiracy. “The purpose of our report is to document the truth,” Key tells WND. “We, as so many others do, believe that facts regarding other perpetrators, prior knowledge, and the number of explosive devices used to damage the Murrah Building has been concealed.” Key says the committee found “substantial evidence” proving that federal law enforcement officials and court officials knew of the attack well beforehand, but either ignored those warnings or deliberately allowed the attack to go forward. One of those warnings came from a government informant, Carole Howe, whose credibility was questioned by her handlers at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF—see August 1994 - March 1995). Other warnings came from two informants affiliated with organizations in foreign countries, Key says. Four government agencies, including the BATF and the US Marshals, received a notification “to be on the alert for possible attacks against individuals, federal institutions, or the public at large.” Key also says that Federal Judge Wayne Alley, who originally handled the case against convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997), told a reporter that the day of the bombing he had been warned to be on the alert for a possible bombing. Key also says he has statements from five witnesses who claim that no BATF agents were in the building at the time of the attack (this is false; a BATF agent documented his experiences in trying to escape from the building; see 9:02 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995). Other witnesses have told Key that they saw bomb squad vehicles in downtown Oklahoma City before the bomb went off. Key says “over 70 witnesses” saw McVeigh “and one or more John Does” in the days before, and on the day of, the bombing. After the bombing, Key says, around 40 witnesses identified the now-infamous “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995) as a man of Middle Eastern descent (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After). Federal authorities ignored those witnesses, Key claims. Key also says that several witnesses in the building told of a “second bomb” going off before (not after) McVeigh’s truck bomb exploded. (Claims that a second bomb went off after the truck bomb detonated have been disputed—see After 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and 9:22 a.m. April 19, 1995). Some of the witnesses say that the first, smaller detonation drove them to hide under their desks just before the larger bomb detonated, thus giving them the chance to save themselves. Key says the committee obtained seismological evidence from what he calls an expert source that, he says, “supports the fact that there were multiple explosions” that morning. But, as was the case with other witnesses, the expert “was not allowed to testify at the federal trials,” the report says. And, Key says, witnesses claim to have actually seen a number of bombs in the building that morning, reports that caused rescue personnel to evacuate the building while people were still trapped inside (see 10:00 a.m. and After, April 19, 1995 and 10:28 a.m. April 19, 1995). The report questions the size of McVeigh’s bomb, which was estimated at a number of different sizes but was eventually concluded by government experts to be somewhere around 4,800 pounds; the report says that estimate is incorrect. The damage suffered by the Murrah Building could not have been caused by a bomb of that size, according to “experts” quoted by the report. Key also says that the government deliberately prevented evidence of others’ involvement in the bombing to be used in McVeigh’s and Nichols’s trials, and says that indictments against the two named those persons (this is false—see August 10, 1995). Key says allegations by Jayna Davis that Osama bin Laden masterminded the bomb conspiracy (see March 20, 2001) support the report’s contentions. The report contains other allegations, including possible involvement by federal law enforcement and court officials, FBI officials refusing to allow Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) personnel to investigate the building, FBI officials refusing to run fingerprint checks of over 1,000 prints obtained in the investigation, what the report calls “blatant bias” exhibited towards “anyone asking questions or probing into facts,” and of breaking “[v]irtually all of the rules governing grand juries.” Key’s committee concludes that the Clinton administration “had prior knowledge of the bombing,” and that “McVeigh and Nichols did not act alone.” Key tells WND: “The final report represents years of extensive investigation and countless interviews. It contains information never reported before in any forum.” [WorldNetDaily, 5/4/2001]

Gore Vidal and friend. [Source: Economist]Author Gore Vidal says he will attend the execution of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997). Vidal was offered one of three witness slots McVeigh was given for friends or family members. Vidal says he has “exchanged several letters” with McVeigh since McVeigh wrote him in 1998 about an article Vidal wrote on the Bill of Rights. Vidal says that while he does not approve of the bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), he and McVeigh share some views on the federal government. “He’s very intelligent,” Vidal says of McVeigh. “He’s not insane.” Vidal says he and McVeigh agree that the federal government went far beyond its limits in the FBI’s assault on the Branch Davidian compound outside of Waco, Texas, an assault that resulted in the deaths of 78 people (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After). “This guy’s got a case—you don’t send the FBI in to kill women and children,” Vidal says. “The boy has a sense of justice.” Vidal says he intends to write an article for Vanity Fair about the execution. [New York Times, 5/7/2001]

New York Times reporter James Sterngold goes to Kingman, Arizona, to interview people there about a former resident, convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997), who now awaits execution (see June 11-13, 1997). While many in the small desert town continue to voice their suspicion of, and opposition to, the federal government as McVeigh did, they do not endorse McVeigh’s actions. McVeigh’s friend Walter “Mac” McCarty, an elderly ex-Marine who always carries a gun on his hip, recalls McVeigh attending some of his courses on handgun usage and safety (see February - July 1994). McCarty says he is angry at McVeigh for blowing up the Murrah Federal Building and killing 168 people (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995). He calls the bombing senseless, but has an equal amount of anger and criticism for the FBI’s actions after the bombing, when he says agents from that bureau descended on the town and harassed its citizens. Kingman is not a haven for anti-government extremists, McCarty says. “There never was at any time a really organized militia or group like that around Kingman, and I would know,” he says. There are some people around here who think that way, I can tell you that. But it’s not organized like they say.” McCarty’s statement does not completely coincide with Kingman history. Arizona has had a number of active militias in the recent past, according to Kingman Police Chief Larry J. Butler, and some terrorist attacks, the largest being the derailment of an Amtrak train six months after McVeigh detonated his bomb (see October 9, 1995). Butler says during the mid-1990s, he would occasionally hear of hunters coming across makeshift survivalist camps in the desert. Butler remembers some “zealots” who would argue with his officers, claiming the government had no right to force them to register their cars or get drivers’ licenses, but he says those confrontations had dwindled away to almost nothing. Butler says: “To the extent there were any, Tim McVeigh killed the feelings for militias around here. I can tell you, there’s no sympathy for them.” Steve Johnson of the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department, agrees, saying: “I can’t say that they are here and I can’t say that they aren’t here. We just don’t see them.” Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center say that since McVeigh’s bombing, the number of militia groups in Arizona has dropped sharply. [New York Times, 5/10/2001]

The Justice Department reveals that it failed to turn over nearly 4,000 pages of documentary evidence to the defense in the trial of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995 and June 2, 1997). Attorney General John Ashcroft postpones McVeigh’s execution (see January 16, 2001) for 30 days to allow defense attorneys to review the newly released documents. [Douglas O. Linder, 2001; New York Times, 5/11/2001; Washington Post, 5/11/2001; Fox News, 4/13/2005] Apparently many of the documents relate to the FBI’s investigation into the never-identified “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995), which the agency now terms a “dead-end” investigation. Sources say many of the documents are “302 forms,” the forms that document the raw interviews conducted by agents with witnesses. [Washington Post, 5/11/2001; Mayhem (.net), 4/2009] The documents were found by bureau archivists in Oklahoma City as they canvassed the agency’s 56 field offices in a final search of records related to the bombing in anticipation of McVeigh’s execution (see June 11-13, 1997). Lawyers for both McVeigh and his convicted co-conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) were legally entitled to review the records as they prepared for the two trials. Justice Department spokesperson Mindy Tucker issues the following statement: “On Tuesday, May 8, the Department of Justice notified Timothy McVeigh’s attorney of a number of FBI documents that should have been provided to them during the discovery phase of the trial. While the department is confident the documents do not in any way create any reasonable doubt about McVeigh’s guilt and do not contradict his repeated confessions of guilt, the department is concerned that McVeigh’s attorneys were not able to review them at the appropriate time.” The FBI blames its obsolete computer system for the error. Prosecutors say the documents were not material to either case. McVeigh’s former lawyer Stephen Jones says, “I said all along they weren’t giving us everything.” [New York Times, 5/11/2001; Indianapolis Star, 2003] Law professor James S. Liebman, who helped conduct an extensive study of death penalty appeals across the country, says the failure to produce the documents is “something I’ve just never heard of.… I can tell you, it’s extremely rare if it’s ever happened before.” [Washington Post, 5/11/2001]

New York Times reporter David Stout observes that the FBI’s admitted failure to turn over documents to convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995, June 2, 1997, and May 10-11, 2001) will fuel conspiracy theories that will last for years. Attorney General John Ashcroft admitted as much when he ordered a delay in McVeigh’s scheduled execution to review the incident, saying, “If any questions or doubts remain about this case, it would cast a permanent cloud over justice.” Stout writes: “But for some people the cloud has been there all along, and always will be. They will never accept the government’s assertion that the withholding of the documents was simple human, bureaucratic error. And so the 1995 bombing of a federal office building in Oklahoma City seems likely to join the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as events whose truth—in the eyes of some Americans—is forever untold.” Charles Key, a former Oklahoma state legislator who has recently released a statement packed with assertions of a larger conspiracy and government malfeasance surrounding the bombing (see May 4, 2001), has been particularly vocal in his scorn over the document incident, and his contention that it is just part of a larger conspiracy by the government to cover up the truth behind the bombing. McVeigh’s former lawyer Stephen Jones seems to agree with Key; in his recent book (see August 14-27, 1997) Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma Bombing Conspiracy, Jones asserts: “The real story of the bombing, as the McVeigh defense pursued it, is complex, shadowy, and sinister. McVeigh, like the government, had its own reasons to keep it so. It stretches, web-like, from America’s heartland to the nation’s capital, the Far East, Europe, and the Middle East, and much of it remains a mystery.” Others go even farther in their beliefs. Charles Baldridge of Terre Haute, Indiana, where McVeigh is incarcerated awaiting execution, says, “I won’t say that McVeigh didn’t do it, but he wasn’t the brains, he wasn’t the one who orchestrated it.” Asked who orchestrated the bombing, Baldridge replies, “The government.” Many people believe that if the government did not actually plan and execute the bombing, it allowed it to happen, in order to use it as an excuse for passing anti-terrorism laws and curbing basic freedoms. Many of the same conspiracy theories that sprouted in the aftermath of the Branch Davidian tragedy (see April 19, 1993 and April 19, 1993 and After) are now appearing in the public discourse about the Oklahoma City bombing, Stout notes. [New York Times, 5/13/2001]

FBI Director Louis J. Freeh admits that the bureau made a “serious error” in failing to produce nearly 4,000 pages of documents related to the Oklahoma City bombing before the convictions of conspirators Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) and Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998). McVeigh’s lawyers are seeking a delay in McVeigh’s execution to give them a chance to review the newly-released documents (see May 10-11, 2001); the execution, scheduled for today, has already been postponed until June 11. Nichols’s lawyers have asked for a new trial based on the documents’ release (see May 15, 2001). In a hearing before a House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee, Freeh gives details of how the breakdown occurred, and says he has ordered immediate corrective steps. “The FBI committed a serious error by not ensuring that every piece of information was properly accounted for and, when appropriate, provided to the prosecutors so that they could fulfill their discovery obligations,” Freeh tells the House committee members. “It was our unquestionable obligation to identify every document regardless of where it was generated and regardless of where in our many, many offices it resided.” However, Freeh says, none of the documents would have had a bearing on the trials of either McVeigh or Nichols: “Several lawyers and agents from the Justice Department and the FBI conducted a page-by-page review of the material. Nothing in the documents raises any doubt about the guilt of McVeigh and Nichols.” Representative David R. Obey (D-WI) says, “I find it incredibly frustrating that year after year the agency which is supposed to be the quintessential example of excellence in law enforcement winds up being an example of Mr. Foul-up.” [New York Times, 5/17/2001] Lawyers for both Nichols and McVeigh will receive the documents. [New York Times, 5/27/2001]

The General Services Administration (GSA) reports that there was no truth to assertions that Clinton White House officials had vandalized the White House before departing in January 2001. Bush White House officials made those assertions in January (see January 25, 2001), claims which were picked up on and embellished by conservative talk radio hosts and other media reporters (see January 25-27, 2001 and January 26, 2001). The GSA investigated the claims at the request of House Representative Bob Barr (R-GA). Normal Wear and Tear, Pranks Found - The GSA report finds that nothing unusual had occurred during the transition from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. “The condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy,” the GSA report finds. Although some pranks were found to have taken place—“W” keys removed from computer keyboards and signs reading “Office of Strategery” placed on office doors, for example—none of the other alleged actions took place. No Evidence for Allegations of Vandalism - No computers, copiers, or telephones were destroyed; no lewd graffiti or pornographic images were pasted to walls or displayed on computer monitors. Nothing was stolen either from the White House or from Air Force One, as many reports had insisted (see February 8, 2001 and February 14, 2001). Attempt to Smear Clinton Administration? - Harvard University’s Alex Jones says: “I think it was this calculated effort to plant a damaging story. There was a sort of fertile ground for believing anything bad.” The General Accounting Office’s Bernard Unger, director for physical infrastructure, says of the GSA investigation, “They told me that there were papers that were not organized lying on the floor and on desks; there were some scratches here and there, but the bottom line was they didn’t see anything really in their view that was significant and that would appear to some as real extensive damage.” Clinton aide Mark Lindsay, who oversaw the transition between the Clinton and Bush administration, says he is pleased that the GSA has set the record straight. “Because of President Clinton, this was one of the smoothest transitions in the history of the presidency,” he says. “This was nothing more than just lies.” Conservative pundit Tony Snow, one of the harshest critics of the Clinton administration over the so-called “vandal scandal” (see January 26, 2001), says, “I’m perfectly willing to admit my error on the aircraft,” but insists that the information he disseminated about vandalism and wholesale theft at the White House was true. “What often happens in Washington is gossip becomes news,” he notes. “That’s not a good thing.” [Kansas City Star, 5/18/2001; New York Times, 5/19/2001] Former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta says: “Certainly people inside the [Bush] administration fed this story. At least they got what they wanted out of it.” [Salon, 5/23/2001]

Of all the media outlets that pushed the false Clinton “vandal scandal” story (see January 26, 2001), only Fox News immediately offers a true retraction. Fox had been at the forefront of repeating, and embellishing, reports of vandalism and theft carried out by Clinton staffers in the last days of their administration. After the General Services Administration (GSA) reports that none of the reports were true (see May 18, 2001), Fox acknowledges on the air that its reporting had been false. Two days later, Fox News Sunday host Tony Snow, who had accused the Clinton staffers of vandalizing and looting Air Force One (see January 26, 2001), admits his error. “OK, I’m sorry,” Snow says. “The ex-president’s pals have a legitimate beef.” Other media outlets, including NBC News, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, fail to report on the GSA report, or to acknowledge their own errors in spreading the tales. [Salon, 5/23/2001] The Washington Post does eventually report, briefly, on the GSA findings, as do some other newspapers, and Post ombudsman Michael Getler will later write, “The use of a brief news service account rather than a well-displayed, staff-written story about the GSA findings tells me that the readers who complained have better news judgment than the editors.” [American Journalism Review, 7/2001]

A scene from the UW Horticulture Center fire. [Source: Associated Press]Two college students set off a firebomb at the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture that causes $7 million in damages. No one is injured in the blast, caused by several time-delayed fire bombs. Lacey Phillabaum and Jennifer Kolar are affiliated with the Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997), which will take credit for the bombing. ELF’s plan was to target genetically-engineered poplar trees at the center, but the bomb also destroys other research projects, including wetlands restoration and endangered stickweed plants. Since 2000, ELF has targeted companies and government facilities involved in genetic engineering; a professor involved in the poplar project, Toby Bradshaw, received timber-industry funding for the research. ELF’s statement after the bombing calls the genetically engineered poplars “an ecological nightmare” for the diversity of native forests. Bradshaw will say that most of the damage he suffered was to his office; a greenhouse containing some 80 genetically-engineered poplars survives unscathed. “The truth is that we’re dealing with a bunch of misinformed… folks who don’t understand the research that was being carried out,” Bradshaw will say. “Even though I was the target, I am the one who was least affected.” Of charges that his “mutant” trees would damage the environment, Bradshaw says his work will almost certainly never “see the outside of a greenhouse.” The UW bombing is one of two planned for the day of May 21; a second bombing also occurs at a Clatskanie, Oregon, poplar farm owned by a timber firm, claiming two buildings and a dozen vehicles. Five years later, Phillabaum and Kolar will plead guilty to participating in the firebombing and other, lesser charges in return for their cooperation in a federal investigation into attacks mounted by ELF and its sister organization, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976). US Attorney John McKay will say, “These violent acts of destruction are not a valid form of political speech.” Both will receive significantly smaller prison terms than they may have received had they gone to trial and been convicted of all counts. Three other ELF members were at the scene: William C. Rodgers, a longtime ELF activist who will commit suicide in an Arizona jail in 2005 (see October 19, 1998); Justin Solondz, who helped assemble the bombs and is now a fugitive; and Briana Waters, who has been indicted for serving as a lookout for the UW bombing. [Los Angeles Times, 6/9/2001; Seattle Times, 10/5/2006]

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer backs off of previous claims that Clinton administration officials vandalized the White House, and stole all manner of items, during the January 2001 transition between the Clinton and Bush administrations (see January 26, 2001). A General Services Administration report found the allegations virtually without merit (see May 18, 2001). Fleischer is asked about the report, and about his allegations that Bush officials had made a “catalogue” of the vandalism and theft that apparently does not exist. Fleischer now says that he had attempted to “knock… down” reports of alleged vandalism “and draw everybody back and away from this story because it was not something the White House was pursuing.” Fleischer continues: “And I indicated that there was no investigation going on, because there wasn’t. I said, if anything, somebody is cataloguing this. And the next day I further explained that meant that somebody was just keeping mental track of what was taking place. There were no written records about it all. But they were keeping on eye on and noting what did take place as this administration came into office.… The General Services Administration contacted the White House recently and asked if there were any written records of what took place. And just as I indicated, because there were no written records, the White House informed the General Services Administration that we had no written records to provide them. And I think that’s what their report indicated, the White House did not provide them any written records because there were none. Which is what I indicated at the time.” Fleischer says the White House intends “not to live in the past” and focus on “things that took place as this administration entered office…” [White House, 5/22/2001] Fleischer fails to acknowledge that it was his hints and innuendos to the White House press corps that encouraged the story to spread (see January 25, 2001).

In the aftermath of the General Services Administration’s report that the Clinton “vandal scandal” never happened (see May 18, 2001), some wonder how involved the Bush administration was in pushing the falsehoods onto the press—and how willing the press was to run with the juicy, but baseless, allegations. Former Clinton press secretary Jake Siewert says: “The media left a very damaging and false impression. I’d hope the reporters [would] go back and try to figure out what went wrong.” Siewert is less critical of the Bush administration’s role in the scandal, saying that “it’s hard to put any blame on the administration.” Siewert also declines to lay blame on Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer, “especially,” Siewert says, “if the guidance he got on the story was wrong” (see May 22, 2001). Washington Post reporter Lloyd Grove, whose short report sparked the entire controversy (see January 23, 2001), says Fleischer is at the heart of the story. “The person who really needs to explain what he was doing was Ari, why he let the story percolate, and why he juiced it with his coy responses,” Grove says. “I think it’s a fair point to ask to what extent Mr. Fleischer’s credibility has been damaged by this.” Washington Post reporter Mike Allen, who contributed much of the Post’s reporting of the alleged vandalism (see January 26, 2001), says Fleischer’s allegation that Clinton staffers “cut [the] wires” of telephones and computers sparked so much coverage (see January 25, 2001). “That seems tough to ignore,” Allen says. Journalism professor Geneva Overholser pins much of the blame on the press: “We wouldn’t have had to go through all this if we had done our job right in the first place.” The media should have pressed harder for documentation and should not have allowed White House sources to remain anonymous, she says. “It’s just amazing what we let people get away with saying.” One White House reporter says that Fleischer did not have to do much more than start the story rolling. “We’re often such willing co-conspirators,” the reporter says. “They don’t have to hatch anything.” [Salon, 5/23/2001; American Journalism Review, 7/2001]

One of the documents turned over to the lawyers for convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirators Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) and Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) is a report about a purported eyewitness to the bombing (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995) whose statements were attacked during McVeigh’s trial. Eyewitness Morris John Kuper Jr. called the FBI two days after the bombing to say that an hour before the bombing, he saw a man resembling McVeigh walking in the company of another man near the Murrah Federal Building. He told agents that he saw both men get into an old, light-colored car similar to the Mercury Marquis McVeigh was arrested in later that morning (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). In court, Kuper described the other man as being similar to a sketch of the suspected, never-identified “John Doe No. 2” (see April 20, 1995, April 21, 1995, April 29, 1995, and June 14, 1995). Kuper also testified that he told agents they should check security cameras at two nearby buildings to see if they caught anything, but, Kuper told the court, “they took my name and phone number and never contacted me again.” FBI documents show that he contacted the FBI via email in October 1995, not on April 21 as he claimed; US Attorney Patrick Ryan challenged Kuper’s credibility in court over the discrepancy in dates. The newly discovered document details Kuper’s conversation with agents on April 21. Ryan says now that he never knew the document existed: “I certainly would never intentionally tell the jury someone had not come forward for six months if I knew they had come forward a couple of days after the bombing.” Ryan says that he still believes Kuper and other defense witnesses who claimed to have seen others accompanying McVeigh before the bombing were “fairly unreliable. The problem with any of these witnesses, even if some were right, you didn’t know which were the right ones and which were the wrong ones.” At the time, fellow prosecutor Beth Wilkinson compared the “John Doe No. 2” accounts to “Elvis sightings.” McVeigh has also said that “John Doe No. 2” does not exist. [New York Times, 5/27/2001]

Michael Fortier, a friend of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) who cooperated with the prosecution of McVeigh and fellow conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998) in order to escape prosecution for his own participation in the bomb plot, says through his attorneys that federal prosecutors lied in order to get a harsher sentence for him. Fortier was given 12 years in prison for his actions (see May 27, 1998). During his sentencing hearing, prosecutors argued that Fortier’s sentence should exceed standard guidelines because of the magnitude of the crime. They argued that Fortier knew profits from the sale of stolen guns would be used to help finance the bombing because he was present when his wife, Lori, and McVeigh discussed it (see April 3-4, 1995). Recently, prosecutor Sean Connelly conceded there was no evidence Fortier was present during the conversation between his wife and McVeigh or was told by either one of them what had been said. [Mayhem (.net), 4/2009]

A compendium of documents both real and forged is given to US intelligence by Italy’s military intelligence agency, SISMI. It is doubtful that the US receives the key documents themselves—it is standard practice among intelligence agencies to share reports, but not original materials, with allies. The dossier includes materials purloined from the Nigerien embassy in Rome (see January 2, 2001). According to document peddler Rocco Martino (see Early 2000), SISMI later added more documents to the ones he originally obtained from the Nigerien embassy, including a codebook and a dossier filled with documents both genuine and forged. The dossier includes an authentic telex dated February 1, 1999, in which Nigerien ambassador Adamou Chekou wrote to another official about a forthcoming visit from Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq’s ambassador to the Vatican (see February 1999). Forged Document Asserting Sale of Uranium to Iraq Included - The last and most important document the US receives is a forged memo dated July 7, 2000. This forgery is supposedly a report on the sale of 500 tons of pure “yellowcake” uranium per year by Niger to Iraq (see Between 1999 and 2000 and Summer 2001). Such uranium is useful in making nuclear weapons. Documents for Money - For Martino’s part, it seems that his only motivation in disseminating the forged documents is money. Italian reporter Carla Bonini later says, “He was not looking for great amounts of money—$10,000, $20,000, maybe $40,000.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 236]CIA Analysts Disbelieving of Claims - The initial reaction of the CIA analysts reading over the documents is to dismiss the reports of an Iraqi attempt to buy huge quantities of Nigerien uranium as ridiculous. In September 2006, veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern will say: “The reports made no sense on the face of it. Most of us knew the Iraqis already had yellowcake. It is a sophisticated process to change it into a very refined state and they didn’t have the technology.” In October 2006, Larry Wilkerson, the chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, will say, “The idea that you could get that much yellowcake out of Niger without the French knowing, that you could have a train big enough to carry it, is absurd.” Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who will serve in the Pentagon’s Near East and South Asia Division in 2002 and 2003, will note in October 2005: “Yellowcake is unprocessed bulk ore. If Saddam [Hussein] wanted to make nuclear bombs, why would he want unprocessed ore, when the best thing to do would be to get processed stuff in the Congo?” McGovern will add that it is routine for “all manner of crap” to come “out of the field.” The CIA’s experienced analysts “are qualified to see if these reports made sense. For some reason, perhaps cowardice, these reports were judged to be of such significance that no one wanted to sit on it.” [London Times, 8/1/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 207-208]Difference in Dates - Other sources say that SISMI waits until October 2001 to provide the documents to the US (see October 15, 2001).

The environmental activism group Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997) releases a new handbook on its Web site, giving details about how to carry out a variety of attacks—“direct actions”—against corporations, universities, and government firms who in group members’ opinions are damaging the environment. One section discusses “the politics and practicalities of arson,” and observes: “Guarantee destruction of the target through careful planning and execution.… Take no shortcuts.… Never be satisfied with possible destruction or probable destruction. The objective of every action should be assured destruction. The risks are too high for anything else.” The techniques outlined in the handbook have been used several times recently, including in the firebombing of a University of Washington horticulture project and an Oregon tree farm (see May 21, 2001). The FBI says that after intensive investigation, it has determined that ELF has a cohesive and identifiable hierarchy of leadership; ELF has always insisted that it is a “leaderless resistance” movement that operates chiefly through independent cells of activists. “There is a certain core, or central organization, that knows what is going on throughout the country,” says Phil Donegan, a senior FBI agent in Portland, Oregon. “That’s part of the criminal case that we’re building.” Donegan says ELF’s activities warrant its designation as a domestic terrorism group. [Los Angeles Times, 6/9/2001]

Anthony Weiner. [Source: Anthony Weiner]A Democratic House member and four former Clinton administration staff members demand an apology from President Bush over the disproven Clinton “vandal scandal” stories from January 2001 (see January 25, 2001 and January 26, 2001). Two weeks ago, the General Services Administration (GSA) released a report debunking the stories (see May 18, 2001). In response, the White House leaks a hastily compiled “list” of damages that Bush staffers allege was done during the transition period (see June 2-3, 2001). Demand for Apology - Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) is joined by former White House officials Rob Housman, Jeff Gulko, Bridger McGaw, and Matthew Donoghue in demanding that Bush apologize for besmirching Clinton officials’ reputations with the false allegations. Weiner calls White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who was at the center of much of the rumors, “shameless,” and adds, “A GAO [General Accounting Office] study has confirmed there was no destruction of keyboards, no graffiti, there was no vandalism.” (The GAO found that because the White House had no records of the damages, it could not begin an investigation of the charges.) Semi-Denial - Fleischer’s deputy, Scott McClellan, notes that “there is no actual GAO ‘report,’ which the congressman refers to in his letter. There’s just a letter from GAO.” McClellan’s odd denial is, according to some Bush officials, an attempt to imply that there was actual damage done by Clinton staffers, but the Bush White House chose not to participate in the GAO’s proposed investigation because it wanted to “move forward” and keep a “positive tone.” One White House aide says: “We never kept a list of all the incidents, and therefore did not have anything to turn over. That doesn’t mean the incidents didn’t happen. We just were pleased to let the matter fade so that people could return to the focus on policy.” Response to Semi-Denial - Weiner says that the Bush White House claims are disingenuous. “I believe that the responsibility for this largely lies with the White House,” he says. “They fed this story, they nurtured this story, they spread this story.” The “vandal scandal” story was, Weiner says, part of a “strategy by the nascent Bush administration to toss up as much dust and smoke about the Clinton administration to give themselves a soft landing. It makes good copy to say ‘Well, there’s a new sheriff in town, and we don’t vandalize offices.’ Well, neither did the preceding administration.” Clinton staffers were made into “cannon fodder” for Bush administration propaganda, Weiner says. Donoghue calls the tales “a uniquely Capitol punishment, and that is the besmirching of our reputations. Standing here, all I can think of is what Ray Donovan said years ago, which is ‘Where do I go to get my reputation back?’ And that’s why we’re here today.” (Donovan is a former Reagan administration Cabinet official acquitted of bribery charges in 1987.) Donoghue says that he, McGaw, and Gulko have had problems finding jobs after their White House stints in part because of the vandalism allegations. [Salon, 6/2/2001]

Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, awaiting execution (see January 16, 2001), changes his mind about his appeals, and allows his attorneys to file a motion to delay his execution. Six days later, an appeals court refuses to delay the execution and McVeigh announces he is ready to die. [Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Fox News, 4/13/2005] McVeigh’s attorneys write in their motion that the government continues to withhold evidence (see May 10-11, 2001): “The overt acts alleged against Mr. McVeigh, together with the circumstantial evidence and absence of proof concerning the making of the bomb, created the impressions that Mr. McVeigh was the primary actor bearing full responsibility for the bombing. In this context, any credible evidence that other specific individuals played a major role in the bombing, for example construction of the bomb, would have cast doubt on the overt acts committed by Mr. McVeigh. If Mr. McVeigh’s execution is stayed and he is given access to the tools of civil discovery, there is reason to believe that a nexus between some of these individuals and Mr. McVeigh will be established.” Judge Richard P. Matsch, who presided over the McVeigh trial, has called the prosecution’s failure to turn over the evidence “shocking.” [Mayhem (.net), 4/2009]

Bush officials release this photo as evidence of the ‘systematic vandalism’ performed by outgoing Clinton staffers in January 2001. [Source: White House / Salon]The White House releases a list of damages it says were done by Clinton staffers as part of the Clinton “vandal scandal,” allegations that the White House and Air Force One were vandalized and looted in the final days of the Clinton administration (see January 26, 2001). White House press secretary Ari Fleischer gives the list to Washington Post reporter Mike Allen, but no one else. Catalogue Based on Bush Staffers' Recollections - For months, White House officials have claimed they were keeping a “catalogue” detailing the damages done, but until now have failed to produce that catalogue; such a listing was not provided to the General Services Administration (GSA) when it reported that the stories of vandalism and looting were almost entirely false (see May 18, 2001). The General Accounting Office (GAO) reported in April that, partly because of the White House’s refusal to release its list of damages, it could confirm none of the often-sensational claims. According to Allen, the damages include “obscene graffiti in six offices, a 20-inch-wide presidential seal ripped off a wall, 10 sliced telephone lines, and 100 inoperable computer keyboards.” Also, pornographic or obscene phone messages were recorded on 15 telephone lines in various offices, requiring the answering machines to be reprogrammed; some printers had pornographic images inserted in stacks of blank copy paper. Doorknobs and nameplates are also listed as “missing.” Most of the alleged vandalism occurred, not in the White House, but in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, adjacent to the White House. Fleischer says the catalogue was not prepared until Friday, and is based on what Allen calls “the recollections of officials and career government employees, in response to Democrats’ ‘suggestion that the Bush White House made things up’” (see June 1, 2001). Blaming Clinton Officials, Democrats, Press - Fleischer tells Allen: “The White House will defend itself and the career employees. We tried to be gracious, but the last administration would not take graciousness. By getting the information out, we hope to put an end to this, so everyone can go on with the policy and business of the government.” Former Clinton officials note that Fleischer’s catalogue bears little resemblance to the lurid claims of widespread destruction and looting made in January. Former presidential press secretary Joe Lockhart says the vandalism allegations were part of a failed Bush strategy to “make the new administration look good by comparison to the last one.” He adds: “If anyone did anything that harmed government property, that’s wrong. But to have suggested there was an organized effort that ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage is grossly wrong and misleading.” House Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) says that Fleischer and other Bush officials “deliberately misled the American people and smeared the names of public servants who were guilty of nothing.” Fleischer blames the press for keeping the story alive, saying: “Sometimes, stories just are like water running downhill and you can try to slow down the press, but you can’t stop them. All the White House comments were aimed at moving forward. It was all in the context of drawing reporters back from the story, because that’s what the president wanted.” [Washington Post, 6/3/2001]

The General Accounting Office (GAO) intends to reopen its investigation into the so-called Clinton “vandal scandal,” which alleged that Clinton aides had vandalized and looted both the White House and Air Force One in the final days of the Clinton administration (see January 26, 2001). The General Services Administration has recently found that reports of vandalism and theft are almost wholly false (see May 18, 2001). The GAO wants the list of damages that White House press secretary Ari Fleischer recently gave the Washington Post (see June 2-3, 2001), a list that for months White House officials insisted never existed. “We are going to proceed and do the review,” says Bernard Ungar, the GAO’s director of physical infrastructure. “Now they say there is a list.” In April, the GAO asked for the list, which Fleischer had said in January was being compiled (see January 25, 2001); at that time, White House officials admitted that such a list did not exist except in some officials’ “heads” (see April 18, 2001). White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan says that President Bush and others have been downplaying the “vandal scandal” issue because Bush wanted to “move forward”; however, she says, “when it became clear on Friday that others wanted to pursue this issue, the White House staff reconstructed orally what happened.” Buchan is referring to demands from Anthony Weiner (D-NY) that Bush apologize for smearing Clinton staffers’ reputations with the false allegations (see June 1, 2001). “Nothing has fundamentally changed about this story from the very beginning,” says former Clinton press secretary Jake Siewert. “The White House has been smearing a whole class of people without providing any evidence. Most of us are perfectly willing to accept the fact if it turns out to be that something happened. It’s just been these vague allegations without any proof. If there’s damage, there will be a record. If I wanted to get a phone fixed, there’s a paper trail.” Buchan blames White House service staff, who work at the site regardless of what administration is in office, for the original rumors. [Knight Ridder, 6/4/2001] A year later, the GAO will release a report finding “minor damages” occurred during the Clinton-Bush transition (see June 12, 2002).

Some former Clinton administration officials are furious at the White House’s release of a “list” of alleged vandalism (see January 25, 2001 and January 26, 2001) to a Washington Post reporter (see June 2-3, 2001), and demand that the White House document its charges. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer admitted that the list was only put together a few days before and was entirely based on the recollections of Bush officials. He says the White House will document the charges on the list if asked by the General Accounting Office (see June 4, 2001). Former Clinton press secretary Jake Siewert calls Fleischer’s tactics “incredibly infuriating,” and says documentation of the vandalism allegations should be simple because the government keeps careful records of repairs to phones and computers. “If I needed my keyboard fixed, I had to submit a form,” says Siewert, who worked in the White House for more than six years. “There should have been records of all this stuff.” Bush officials say the existing repair records do not indicate the causes of damage, and therefore cannot validate the vandalism claims. The General Services Administration (GSA) concluded in an investigation that the charges of vandalism and looting were almost completely false (see May 18, 2001); the GAO said it was unable to open its own investigation because of “the lack of records… reported by the White House.” House Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY—see June 1, 2001) says through a spokesman, “The White House’s continuing campaign of disinformation and possible violation of federal law for noncompliance with a GAO investigation calls its credibility—and its list of damaged property—into serious question.” Weiner’s House colleague Bob Barr (R-GA), who has demanded a GAO investigation, has called the failure of the White House to document its vandalism charges “a disservice to the American taxpayers” and asked the GAO “to ensure proper records of federal government property are kept during future presidential transitions.” [Washington Post, 6/4/2001]

Eric D. Hanson, a former Marine, overt racist, and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance (see 1970-1974), is killed after a 14-hour gun battle and standoff with police in Lindenhurst, Illinois. Police investigtors approach Hanson while he is sitting in his car in front of his house, and attempt to arrest him for illegal weapons possession and gunrunning. Hanson flees, and the officers follow him to a grocery store parking lot. Hanson then opens fire on the officers, shooting one in the neck and thigh and a second in his bulletproof vest. Hanson runs inside the store, exits to again shoot at the officers, enters the store again and tells those inside to leave, and hides inside the now-deserted store. Police descend on the store. At 3:00 a.m., a remote-controlled bomb squad robot searches the store, but does not locate Hanson. A tactical weapons team then enters the store and finds Hanson hiding in a meat locker. Hanson fires at the tactical officers and they return fire, killing him. Hanson was previously convicted of assaulting an interracial couple in 1999, and told the jury during the proceedings: “Whites and blacks should be separate. It made me upset to see them together.” After his release from jail, he worked diligently for the National Alliance, distributing racist and anti-Semitic literature in Chicago and organizing a local unit in that city. According to a friend, Hanson particularly enjoyed “agitat[ing] the Jews,” and the friend tells reporters of an incident where Hanson and two other Alliance friends bought an Israeli flag in a local mall and stomped it in the middle of the mall while screaming anti-Semitic imprecations. Six months before his final standoff, Hanson assaulted an African-American woman after attending a Ku Klux Klan rally (see December 16, 2000). National Alliance members will memorialize Hanson in emails and Internet forum postings, calling him a hero, a “racial leader” and a “brave warrior,” and accusing police of setting up the situation to ensure Hanson’s death. Alliance members will grant Hanson the status of official “martyr” for the “cause.” [Center for New Community, 8/2002 ; Southern Poverty Law Center, 9/2002; Nicole Nichols, 2003] After Hanson’s death, Dave Neesan, who will succeed Hanson as the Alliance chapter leader in Chicago, will write, “His honor, patriotism, and honesty led him to draw an obvious conclusion: America is in deep trouble, and real Americans—White Americans—are being pushed out of their country.” Hanson was a “white patriot” who was merely protecting his rights against an unfair and murderous police presence, Neesan will say. More importantly, according to Neesan, Hanson’s death galvanizes the Chicago chapter, pushing it to more prominent actions in and around Chicago, though nothing to the level of violence in which Hanson engaged. Like many other more modern white supremacists, Neesan believes in moderating the appearance of organizations like the Alliance, eschewing “white sheets” and racial epithets for suits and ties and toned-down language. Still, Neesan will claim, Hanson and his actions, including his assaults on African-Americans and his violent resistance to arrest, make him a role model for newer Alliance members. [Daily Herald (Arlington Heights), 5/2/2004]

William Pierce, the head of the National Alliance (see 1970-1974) and the author of the infamous race-war fantasy The Turner Diaries (see 1978), says that Timothy McVeigh, the convicted Oklahoma City bomber (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) who was inspired by Pierce’s book, is a “man of principle” who is “willing to accept the consequences” for what he did. However, Pierce does not give his blessing to McVeigh’s act of terrorism, saying: “I wouldn’t have chosen to do what he did.… It’s really shameful to kill a lot of people when there’s no hope for accomplishing anything.” He says that while some of his NA members quit after the bombing, new ones joined: “Probably, on the whole, it was helpful,” he says. [New York Times, 6/9/2001; Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

A small number of Branch Davidians, who live a quiet existence outside of Waco, Texas, and worship in a church dedicated in April 2000 (see September 18, 1999 - April 19, 2000) and built very near the site of the April 1993 conflagration that killed almost 80 of their fellow Davidians (see April 19, 1993), say they have no connection to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh, a racist white separatist who evidence shows used the 1993 tragedy as a spark for his decision to bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the Davidian tragedy (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), is due to be executed for his crime (see June 2, 1997). Davidian leader Clive Doyle says his group does not appreciate McVeigh’s actions. “I don’t see that blowing up a building that kills a whole bunch of kids really makes a strike against the government or law enforcement, if that’s what you’re against,” he says. “It didn’t hurt them all that much and it didn’t help us.” Doyle escaped the April 1993 fire that destroyed the Mt. Carmel compound, but lost his 18-year-old daughter in the flames. Doyle and others say that in recent weeks more and more radical-right extremists have come to view the site of the conflagration; he has begun building a security fence to keep out unwanted visitors. Robert Darden, an English professor who wrote a book on the Branch Davidians and the Waco siege, says the sect is generally peaceful, and had been so until its leader David Koresh led its members down a path of armed militancy. Doyle says he does not believe Koresh would have approved of either the McVeigh bombing or any armed assault against government authorities. He recalls Koresh welcoming a man who offered to rally thousands of militiamen in an attack on federal agents, but also says Koresh discouraged such an action. Ron Goins, who is not a Davidian but who often visits the new church and its members, says, “I felt the same rage [as McVeigh], but I didn’t feel the responsibility upon myself to take lives, especially since there were innocent people who died in Oklahoma City.” Moreover, Goins says, McVeigh’s bombing shifted public attention away from scrutiny of the government and toward “mad bombers, lone gunmen, and things like that.” Doyle says he is unhappy that people now connect the Davidian tragedy with the Oklahoma City bombing. [Waco Tribune-Herald, 6/10/2001]

Lawyers for FBI laboratory employees send an urgent letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft alleging that a key prosecution witness in the trial of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see June 2, 1997 and June 11-13, 1997) may have lied during McVeigh’s trial. The accusations center around Steven Burmeister, now the FBI laboratory’s chief of scientific analysis, who testified that the FBI crime lab found residues of explosives on the clothing that McVeigh was wearing when he was arrested after the bomb exploded (see 9:03 a.m. -- 10:17 a.m. April 19, 1995). The letter reads in part, “Material evidence presented by the government in the OKBOMB prosecution through the testimony of Mr. Burmeister appears to be false, misleading, and potentially fabricated,” referring to testimony Burmeister had given in an unrelated civil case, which contradicted his testimony in the McVeigh case; Burmeister had talked about the restrictions on his work area and the requirement that laboratory employees wear protective clothing. The letter is sent to Ashcroft by fax and by courier with the notation “urgent matter for the immediate attention of the attorney general.” The letter will sit in Ashcroft’s clerical office for nearly two months before being turned over to the FBI. Justice Department spokesperson Barbara Comstock will say that neither Ashcroft nor other top department officials ever saw the letter, and it was never reviewed to determine if it should be given to McVeigh’s lawyers. Prosecutors used Burmeister’s testimony to determine the exact composition of the bomb McVeigh used to bring down the Murrah Federal Building and kill 168 people. The judge in the trial, Richard P. Matsch, refused to allow McVeigh’s lawyers to hear criticisms of the crime lab’s evidence handling (see January 27, 1997 and May 20, 1997). The accusations against Burmeister were never given to McVeigh’s lawyers, even as a judge was weighing the option to delay McVeigh’s execution because the government failed to turn over other evidence (see May 10-11, 2001, May 16, 2001, and June 1-7, 2001). The letter is later turned over to the lawyers of convicted bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see December 23, 1997, June 4, 1998, and May 15, 2001), who will face 160 counts of murder in an upcoming trial by the State of Oklahoma (see September 5, 2001). [New York Times, 5/1/2003]

The execution chamber in the Terre Haute, Indiana, federal prison. McVeigh is strapped into this chair and executed by lethal injection. [Source: Agence France-Presse / University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law]Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see January 16, 2001) is executed by lethal injection as survivors of the bombing and relatives of the victims watch on closed-circuit television. His last meal was two pints of chocolate chip ice cream. According to his lawyers, McVeigh is “upbeat” about his upcoming execution, saying he prefers dying to life in prison. At 7 a.m., dressed in a shirt, khaki pants, and slip-on shoes, McVeigh is led to the execution chamber and strapped to a padded gurney. The curtains over glass panels separating the chamber from a viewing area are opened to allow 30 people to directly watch McVeigh’s final moments, while another 300 victims and relatives gather in Oklahoma City to watch the event on closed-circuit television. (McVeigh’s father William McVeigh chose not to attend the execution, and later tells reporters that he prefers to remember his son as a smiling toddler.) According to witnesses, McVeigh acts as if he is in control of the proceedings, staring straight into the television cameras until the lethal injection—three injections of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and finally potassium chloride—causes him to slip into unconsciousness and death. McVeigh is pronounced dead at 7:14 a.m. local time. [Douglas O. Linder, 2001; Fox News, 4/13/2005; Douglas O. Linder, 2006; TruTV, 2008; Mayhem (.net), 4/2009] His is the first federal execution in over 30 years. [Southern Poverty Law Center, 6/2001] McVeigh says nothing before his execution, but issues a written statement quoting from the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley. [Indianapolis Star, 2003] The last stanza of the poem reads: “It matters not how strait the gate, “How charged with punishments the scroll, “I am the master of my fate: “I am the captain of my soul.” [Guardian, 6/11/2001; University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, 6/11/2001]He has written to reporters that his body will be released to one of his attorneys and cremated, and his ashes spread over an undisclosed location. He wrote that he considers the bloodshed caused by his bombing unfortunate, but is not sorry for his actions, calling the bombing a “legit tactic” in his “war” against the federal government. [Mayhem (.net), 4/2009] He has also asked that his body not be autopsied, a request the prison system grants upon his signature on a form reading: “I, Timothy McVeigh, hereby certify; that no abuse has been inflicted upon me while I have been in the custody of the US Bureau of Prisons. I hereby waive any claim of such abuse.” Presumably he signed the form before his execution, as his body will not be autopsied. [TruTV, 2008]

Authorities say that the black hearse seen leaving the Terre Haute federal penitentiary supposedly carrying the body of executed Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 7:14 a.m. June 11, 2001) was a decoy used as a security measure. McVeigh’s body was actually removed from the penitentiary in a van shortly after the execution. Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Dan Dunne tells a reporter: “Someone could have tried an ambush or something. There are all kinds of possibilities that could have happened.” McVeigh’s body was taken to a local funeral home, where McVeigh was cremated and his ashes given to one of his attorneys, according to the Reverend Ron Ashmore of St. Margaret Mary Church. [Mayhem (.net), 4/2009]

Part of the opening page of Gore Vidal’s article about Timothy McVeigh in Vanity Fair. [Source: Vanity Fair]Vanity Fair publishes a profile of convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh (see 7:14 a.m. June 11, 2001) by author and pundit Gore Vidal, who attended McVeigh’s execution (see May 6, 2001) and who exchanged letters with McVeigh for three years while he awaited execution. McVeigh invited Vidal to attend his execution as a result of their letter exchange. Simplistic Portrayal of McVeigh as Lone 'Mad Bomber' - Vidal is convinced that the government orchestrated McVeigh’s conviction (see June 2, 1997) and the media’s portrayal of McVeigh as a lone mad bomber who “wanted to destroy innocent lives for no reason other than a spontaneous joy in evildoing.” Vidal also asserts that, in the government’s story, McVeigh “had no serious accomplices” (see December 23, 1997 and June 4, 1998). Orchestrating the media response was not particularly difficult, he writes, as few in the mainstream press were particularly interested in why McVeigh carried out the bombing aside from the simple explanation that he was “evil incarnate.” Any explanation of more complexity, Vidal writes, was dismissed as wild conspiracy theories. It was predictable, Vidal writes, that evidence pertinent to McVeigh’s case was not provided until well after his conviction and sentencing (see May 10-11, 2001), and that it would be largely ignored (see June 1-7, 2001). Vidal recounts numerous instances where, when he began to attempt an explanation of McVeigh’s obsession with the 1993 Branch Davidian conflagration (see April 19, 1993) and his belief that he was at war with the US government on a variety of news broadcasts, he was cut short by the hosts. 'Counter-Attack' against US Government - According to Vidal, McVeigh was clear in his letters that the bombing was more than just, McVeigh wrote, “a simple act of ‘revenge’ for Waco,” but “a strike against the US government,” or more precisely, “a ‘counter-attack’ rather than a self-declared war.” In one letter, he quoted pundit H.L. Mencken as writing, “Every normal man must be temped at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” Vidal recalls that he warned McVeigh that “Mencken often resorted to Swiftian hyperbole and was not to be taken too literally.” He then speculates on the “interesting possibility,” perhaps “the grandest conspiracy of all… that he neither made nor set off the bomb outside the Murrah Building: it was only later, when facing either death or life imprisonment, that he saw to it that would be given sole credit for hoisting the black flag and slitting throats, to the rising fury of various ‘militias’ across the land who are currently outraged that he is getting sole credit for a revolutionary act organized, some say, by many others. At the end, if this scenario is correct, he and the detested Feds were of a single mind.” Regardless of who carried out the bombing, Vidal writes, it is clear that “McVeigh himself was eager to commit what he called ‘federally assisted suicide.’” Vidal quotes an interview with Dr. John Smith, a psychiatrist who interviewed McVeigh in prison and was then released from his oath of confidentiality by McVeigh to discuss his findings with reporters, who concluded that McVeigh was quite sane, and carried out the bombing both in revenge for the Waco assault and because “he also wanted to make a political statement about the role of the federal government and protest the use of force against the citizens.” Smith found that McVeigh was disappointed that the media had refused to discuss what he considered “the misuse of power by the federal government” that impelled him to carry out the bombing. Limited Contact with Militias - According to Smith, McVeigh told him, “I did not expect a revolution.” He had had numerous discussions with some of the militia groups around Kingman, Arizona, Smith said, about how easy it would be to “cut Interstate 40 in two” and thereby disrupt the transportation between the eastern and western portions of the country, but those discussions, McVeigh told Smith, were “rather grandiose” and never acted upon. Vidal acknowledges that for three years before the bombing, McVeigh lived in the semi-underground world of the American militia movement. During that time, he came to believe, as many militia members did at the time, that the federal government planned on following up its assault weapons ban (see September 13, 1994) with a massive, nationwide raid on gun owners and militia members in the spring of 1995. Vidal writes, “This was all the trigger that McVeigh needed for what he would do—shuffled the deck, as it were.” Vidal claims that McVeigh, unlike many militia members, had “no hang-ups about blacks, Jews, and all the other enemies of the various ‘Aryan’ white nations to be found in the Patriots’ ranks.” He was fascinated with the violently racist novel The Turner Diaries (see 1978) and 1987-1988), he acknowledges, but only for its themes of individual Americans using guns and explosives to overthrow “the System.” Smith bolstered Vidal’s contention by reporting that McVeigh had insisted to him that he was not a racist nor a homophobe—“he made that very clear.” Rationale for Bombing, and for Killing Civilians, Children - Vidal quotes a 1998 essay McVeigh wrote for the right-wing publication Media Bypass, “Essay on Hypocrisy,” that addressed his choice to blow up the Murrah Building, which contained a daycare center. The US, he wrote, set the precedent for bombing and killing civilians. When US military forces attack Iraqi government buildings with daycare centers or schools in them, McVeigh wrote, the media reported the children were being used as “shields” by the Iraqis. Vidal claims that no evidence exists that proves McVeigh knew about the presence of children in the Murrah Building, and repeats McVeigh’s claims that he had no such foreknowledge. However, Vidal notes, the FBI knew about the children in the Branch Davidian compound, “and managed to kill 27 of them.” In a final set of longhand notes McVeigh sent to Vidal in the weeks before his execution, McVeigh wrote: “I explain herein why I bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. I explain this not for publicity, nor seeking to win an argument of right or wrong, I explain so that the record is clear as to my thinking and motivations in bombing a government installation. I chose to bomb a Federal Building because such an action served more purposes than other options. Foremost, the bombing was a retaliatory strike: a counter-attack, for the cumulative raids (and subsequent violence and damage) that federal agents had participated in over the preceding years (including, but not limited to, Waco). From the formation of such units as the FBI’s ‘Hostage Rescue’ and other assault teams amongst federal agencies during the 80s, culminating in the Waco incident, federal actions grew increasingly militaristic and violent, to the point where at Waco, our government—like the Chinese—was deploying tanks against its own citizens.” The federal government has militarized the police, he wrote, and his bombing was designed as a “pre-emptive (or pro-active) strike against those forces and their command and control centers within the federal building. When an aggressor force continually launches attacks from a particular base of operations, it is sound military strategy to take the flight to the enemy. Additionally, borrowing a page from US foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the US hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option. From this perspective what occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time, and, subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. (The bombing of the Murrah Building was not personal no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy, or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against (foreign) government installations and their personnel.)” 'Exaggerated Sense of Justice' - Vidal has previously written that McVeigh suffered from what he called “an exaggerated sense of justice,” outraging many who read his words. He defends that characterization, and writes, “I knew that few Americans seriously believe that anyone is capable of doing anything except out of personal self-interest, while anyone who deliberately risks—and gives—his life to alert his fellow citizens to an onerous government is truly crazy.” McVeigh’s act may not have sparked a rebellion, Vidal writes, but it did presage an explosion of sorts in the number of citizens identifying themselves with the militia movement, many of whom joined local militia groups because they believed the government had orchestrated the bombing and then unjustly blamed McVeigh for it. Others believe that government agents planted bombs inside the Murrah Building set to go off when McVeigh’s truck bomb detonated. Many believe that McVeigh was used by the government to perpetuate “state police power,” similar to instances during the Vietnam War when “bogus Viet Cong units that were sent out to rape and murder Vietnamese to discredit the National Liberation Front,” or when US forces pretended to “find” Communist arms dumps in El Salvador. Vidal repeats the tale that all 17 members of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) working in their Murrah Building office suspiciously failed to report to work on the day of the bombing, suggesting that they knew of the bombing in advance (see December 30, 1998). Militia Involvement? - Vidal then engages in a long and detailed attack on the evidence that shows McVeigh and his co-conspirator Terry Nichols built the bomb themselves. He believes that McVeigh and Nichols were involved in a complex and shadowy “plot involving militia types and government infiltrators—who knows?—as prime movers to create panic in order to get” President Clinton to enact the Anti-Terrorism Act, and cites research by journalist and author Joel Dyer, who in his own writings detailed his belief that the government downplayed McVeigh’s militia affiliations to make a case that he was a quintessential and possibly deranged “lone bomber.” Dyer and Vidal both cite the poor defense put on by McVeigh’s trial lawyer, Stephen Jones, who, Dyer contended, “often left the jury more confused and bored than convinced of his client’s innocence. Even when he succeeded in his attempts to demonstrate that a large conspiracy was behind the bombing, he did little to show that McVeigh was not at the center of the conspiracy. Jones’s case led some reporters to speculate that McVeigh himself was limiting his own defense in order to prevent evidence that might implicate others in the bombing from entering the record.” McVeigh did indeed confess to the bombing to his defense lawyers and, later, to Vidal, but, Vidal writes, “I believe that by confessing McVeigh was, once again, playing the soldier, attempting to protect his co-conspirators.” Vidal writes that his own research has unearthed a number of militia members who may have played a part in the April 19 bombing, and a systematic effort by the FBI and the McVeigh prosecution team to quash any evidence of that sort during McVeigh’s trial. He also challenges the government’s assertion that the reports of a third co-conspirator, “John Doe No. 2,” was a US Army private with no connection to McVeigh or the bombing (see January 29, 1997). Instead, he writes, that person was likely a well-known militia member in Shawnee County, Kansas, and possibly a member of the separatist Republic of Texas organization. He cites a book on the bombing by former journalist David Hoffman, who was convicted of trying to tamper with the McVeigh jury (see December 30, 1998), as being “the most thorough of a dozen or two accounts of what did and did not happen on that day in April.” Like Vidal, Hoffman does not believe that McVeigh’s truck bomb could have caused the damage inflicted on the Murrah Building, and cites a number of military and government experts who make the same contentions, even citing one report that claims the “five separate bombs” used in the explosion “have a Middle Eastern ‘signature,’ pointing to either Iraqi or Syrian involvement” (see 10:00 a.m. April 19, 1995 and After). Vidal notes that the search for bodies in the destroyed building was halted after 16 days (see May 4, 1995), against the wishes of those who wanted to continue attempting to search for more evidence in the bomb site. Six days later the building was demolished (see 7:01 a.m. May 23, 1995), leading one critic, retired Air Force Brigadier General Benton K. Partin, to declare that the building was demolished as “a classic cover-up” executed by Communist agents. Vidal writes of Partin’s belief that Communists orchestrated the cover-up, “Well, nobody’s perfect.” (Vidal errs in his “six day” claim; the building was demolished 19 days later.) Vidal writes: “In the end, McVeigh, already condemned to death, decided to take full credit for the bombing. Was he being a good professional soldier, covering up for others? Or did he, perhaps, now see himself in a historic role with his own private Harper’s Ferry, and though his ashes molder in the grave, his spirit is marching on? We may know—one day.” [Vanity Fair, 9/2001]

Binyam Mohamed, a young Ethiopian with British citizenry, is in Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks. He later tells a journalist that he wants nothing more than to leave for London before the West can retaliate against al-Qaeda and the Taliban (see May-September, 2001). But Mohamed is unable to leave before the US-led coalition launches its attacks in November. According to Mohamed, he is caught among the tide of refugees, and in early 2002 makes his way across the Afghan-Pakistan border and into the city of Karachi. On April 3, he books a flight to London, but officials turn him away, saying his passport looks wrong (Mohamed entered the region using a friend’s passport). On April 9, he tries again to book a flight with the same passport, and is detained by Pakistani authorities. This is the beginning of almost seven years of incarceration, interrogation, and torture (see February 24, 2009). [Daily Mail, 3/8/2009] Apparently some of the details of Mohamed’s recollections will differ from the recounting of his story as later told by his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith.

Oklahoma City District Attorney Wes Lane announces that Oklahoma will continue prosecuting convicted Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols (see March 29, 1999) on 160 state charges of murder, in part because the state fears Nichols may win his federal appeals (see June 4, 1998). “I will not roll the dice on this issue. There is simply too much at stake,” Lane says. He says that the state will seek the death penalty against Nichols. Lane took over the case after District Attorney Robert Macy retired in June 2001; some have speculated that Oklahoma might drop the case due to the expenditure, the difficulty of finding an impartial jury, and the emotional toll on the victims of another trial. Nichols’s lead lawyer for the state case, Brian Hermanson, writes in a letter quoted by local newspapers that Nichols was willing to drop his appeals and accept a federal life sentence to avoid a state trial. The letter states: “Taking such a step ensures that he will spend the rest of his life in prison. It would enable Mr. Lane to drop the state prosecution, thereby sparing Oklahoma the trauma and expense of another trial.” Lane responds that “the interests of the people of the State of Oklahoma cannot be vindicated by the blind reliance on the federal government or Terry Lynn Nichols,” and says he will seek sanctions against Hermanson for what he calls a “glaring, blatant violation” of a state court order not to discuss the case. Shelly Thompson, who lost her mother in the blast (see 8:35 a.m. - 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995), says: “You can’t just get away with a little bit of a crime. We’re going to go for the whole thing. I want to make sure he will stay in prison for his life. This is something I need to do for her. He was not found guilty in my mother’s death and 159 other deaths. They are more than numbers.” [New York Times, 9/6/2001; The Oklahoman, 4/2009; Mayhem (.net), 4/2009]

Firefighters battle a blaze at a Tucson McDonald’s restaurant. [Source: Moonbattery (.com)]Activists with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF—see 1976) set fire to a McDonald’s restaurant in Tucson, Arizona, causing $500,000 in damages. McDonald’s has long been a target for the organization because of the firm’s large-scale slaughter of beef cattle, and the cover of the ALF manual “ARSON-Around with Auntie ALF” depicts a cartoon of a McDonalds burnt to the ground (see 1997). ALF and its sister organization, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF—see 1997), claim credit for the fire in a joint statement, and say the fire is meant as a warning to corporations worldwide. [Anti-Defamation League, 2005]

Susan Mcelwain, who lives two miles from the Flight 93 crash site, had seen a small jet plane flying very low overhead as she was driving home. She later recalls that it had been “heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down.” But it was only later in the afternoon, after returning home and turning on the TV, that she’d realized what she’d seen was connected to the attacks in New York and Washington. While she was confused that a Boeing 757—not a small jet plane—was being reported as having gone down near where she’d been, she’d then realized that the small plane was flying in a different direction to that being described for Flight 93. So she got her husband to tell the police about what she’d witnessed. Consequently, late in the evening, the FBI turns up to talk to her about it. Yet, as Mcelwain later recalls, “They did not want my story.” They keep asking her how big the plane she’d seen was. When she tells them it was small, not much bigger than her van, one of the agents tells her, “You don’t know what a 757 looks like.” She retorts, “Don’t be condescending towards me. If you don’t want to believe me, that’s fine, but I thought I should report what I saw. You ought to know there was something else in the air at the same time this was going on. We want to make sure it was ours and not somebody else’s.” After this, she will recall, the agent “did seem to get a little nicer. Told me that it was a white Learjet. Somebody was taking pictures. And I said, ‘Before the crash?’ and he says, ‘Well, we’ve got to go,’ and that was the end of it.” [Bergen Record, 9/14/2001; Mirror, 9/12/2002; Lappe and Marshall, 2004, pp. 38-40] Numerous other witnesses also saw a small jet plane flying above the crash site around the time Flight 93 reportedly went down (see (Before and After 10:06 a.m.) September 11, 2001).

The Defense Protective Service (DPS)—the law enforcement agency that guards the Pentagon—arrests three people at the Pentagon who are dressed in firefighting gear but are not firefighters. Further details of who these people are and why they are at the Pentagon are unstated. John Jester, the chief of the DPS, later reflects: “When you have a major event, certain people are like moths around a light bulb. They come to the scene as thrill seekers.” Reportedly, incident command, DPS, and FBI officials are worried by the “absence of an effective identification system to control the large number of people that [are passing] through the outer perimeter fence to support firefighting and recovery operations” at the Pentagon. [Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 170]

Mark Anthony Stroman, a member of a white supremacist prison gang, murders Dallas store owner Waqar Hasan as he grills hamburgers in his store. Stroman will later tell a prison inmate that his murder of Hasan is his ninth crime against Muslims and Middle Easterners, and says he is murdering them in revenge for the 9/11 attacks (see October 4, 2001 and After). [Push Junction, 7/6/2011] Almost ten years later, Stroman will be executed for a similar murder (see July 20, 2011).

Michael Creppy, the chief US immigration judge—actually an executive branch official in the Justice Department, the title of “judge” notwithstanding—orders that all deportation hearings be closed to the public, the press, and even family members. Creppy also prohibits immigration court administrators from listing the detainees’ names or cases on public dockets. The reason is not because there is reason to believe any particular detainee is a suspected terrorist. Instead, the administration asserts, national security demands blanket secrecy because terrorist cells might read about the deportation hearings in the press, piece together bits and pieces of information, and in doing so deduce valuable information about the government’s investigation into the 9/11 attacks and terrorism in general. In 2007, author Charlie Savage will write: “Thus, the public would just have to trust that the government had arrested and deported the right people, even though their names were kept a secret and the decision to expel them from the country was made behind closed doors. By invoking the chance that the enemy might detect a pattern in otherwise harmless information, the government would be justified in withholding everything. The implication of its theory was that the public had no right to know anything, no matter how innocuous, because any tidbit of trivial information could potentially be stitched together with other minor bits of information to conceivably provide some useful insight for terrorists.” In separate proceedings, the Detroit Free Press and several New Jersey media organizations will challenge the Justice Department’s decision in court (see August 26, 2002 and October 2, 2002). [Savage, 2007, pp. 94]

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